Successful Prediction of Human Pharmacokinetics After Oral Administration by Optimized Physiologically Based Pharmacokinetics Approach and Permeation Assay Using Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Intestinal Epithelial Cells

Abstract

None of the physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) approaches using preclinical data show high predictability of human pharmacokinetic (PK) profiles for drugs affected by the intestinal first-pass effect. Here we report a novel PBPK approach that incorporated the findings of a permeation study using human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived intestinal epithelial cells (hiPSC-IECs) to predict human PK profiles after oral administration of drugs. In hiPSC-IECs, gene expression levels of cytochrome P450 3A4 (CYP3A4) and P-glycoprotein (P-gp) are enhanced by rifampicin and 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D₃. The permeability of 24 drugs (10 test drugs and 14 reference drugs), including CYP3A4 and P-gp substrates, correlated highly with gastrointestinal availability (F_a × F_g), and could be converted to the apparent absorption rate constant (k_{a, app}) based on the correlation between F_a × F_g and in vivo k_a of 27 drugs. The k_{a, app} was input into the PBPK model which contained the optimized calculation processes of metabolism and tissue distribution. The absolute average fold error of PK parameters such as maximum plasma concentration and bioavailability for test drugs was less than 2, suggesting that human PK profiles could be predicted with high accuracy. Our robust PBPK approach enables quick decision-making in drug discovery based on human PK profiles.

Keywords: absorption; absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME); intestinal absorption; pharmacokinetics; physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling.