Development of Cassette PAMPA for Permeability Screening

Biol Pharm Bull. 2017;40(4):419-424. doi: 10.1248/bpb.b16-00755.

Abstract

The parallel artificial membrane permeability assay (PAMPA) is widely used in early-stage drug discovery to discriminate compounds by intestinal permeability. The purpose of the current study was to establish a cassette (n-in-1) PAMPA to enable permeability screening of lipophilic compounds. A double-sink PAMPA consisting of a pH gradient (i.e., pH 6.5 and 7.4 for the donor and receiver compartments, respectively) and a lipophilic sink (i.e., a surfactant in the receiver solution) was utilized with cassette incubation of 10 reference compounds. Sample analysis was conducted using selected reaction monitoring (SRM) with a triple quadrupole LC-MS/MS system. Correlation between PAMPA permeability and human intestinal absorption (HIA) of the reference compounds yielded two false negatives, namely propranolol (PPN) and verapamil (VER); these two compounds showed a substantially lower recovery (ca. 10%) than other reference compounds (>69%). This cassette PAMPA was repeated subsequently with polysorbate 80 added to the donor compartments, which resulted in a significant increase in both the recovery and the permeability of the false negatives. Accordingly, the permeability class of all reference compounds could be unambiguously differentiated using this cassette PAMPA. Also, a strong linear correlation (r=0.9845) was observed between the cassette and discrete permeability of all reference compounds.

MeSH terms

  • Caco-2 Cells
  • Cell Membrane Permeability / drug effects
  • Cell Membrane Permeability / physiology
  • Chemistry, Pharmaceutical / methods*
  • Drug Evaluation, Preclinical / methods
  • Fluorescent Dyes / metabolism*
  • Fluorescent Dyes / pharmacology
  • Humans
  • Intestinal Absorption / drug effects
  • Intestinal Absorption / physiology
  • Membranes, Artificial*
  • Permeability / drug effects*
  • Polysorbates / metabolism*
  • Polysorbates / pharmacology
  • Tandem Mass Spectrometry / methods

Substances

  • Fluorescent Dyes
  • Membranes, Artificial
  • Polysorbates