Purpose: To clarify the mechanism of renal impairment leading to different degrees of increased plasma exposure to dipeptidyl peptidase 4 inhibitor vildagliptin and its major metabolite, M20.7.
Methods: The 5/6 nephrectomized (5/6 Nx) rat model, to simulate chronic renal failure (CRF) patients, combined with kidney slices and transporter studies in vitro were used to assess this pharmacokinetic differences.
Results: After intragastric administration to 5/6 Nx rats, vildagliptin showed increased plasma levels by 45.8%, and M20.7 by 7.51 times, which was similar to patients with severe renal impairment. The recovery rate of M20.7 in urine and feces increased by less than 20%, showing limited effect of renal impairment on vildagliptin metabolism. In vitro studies found M20.7 to be the substrate for organic anion transporter 3 (OAT3). However, the active uptake of M20.7 in renal slices showed no difference between the 5/6 Nx and normal rats. In OAT3 overexpressed cells, the protein-bound uremic toxins, 3-carboxy-4-methyl-5propyl-2-furanpropionate (CMPF), hippuric acid (HA) and indoxyl sulfate (IS), which accumulate in CRF patients, inhibited M20.7 uptake with IC50 values of 5.75, 29.0 and 69.5 μM respectively, far lower than plasma concentrations in CRF patients, and showed a mixed inhibition type.
Conclusions: The large increase in plasma exposure of M20.7 could be attributed to the accumulation of uremic toxins in CRF patients, which inhibited OAT3 activity and blocked renal excretion of M20.7, while vildagliptin, with high permeability, showed a slight increase in plasma exposure due to reduced glomerular filtration.
Keywords: Pharmacokinetics; Renal impairment; Transporter inhibition; Uremic toxins; Vildagliptin carboxylic acid metabolite M20.7.
© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.