• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.34-38
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to develop a cocktail approach for the measurement of the permeability of marker compounds, caffeine and propranolol (high permeability), ofloxacin (intermediate), atenolol (low), and quinidine (P-glycoprotein substrate), simultaneously. Then we compared the permeability in Caco-2 cells with that in rat intestinal segments. The difference between individual measurement and cocktail approach was less than 20 %, and the permeabilities of these compounds were similar to those previously reported, suggesting that the cocktail transport study and simultaneous drug analysis were successfully developed and validated in this study. Additionally, in the application of this cocktail method, the permeability of five drugs in rat jejunum was similar to that in ileum but different from that in colon, which was measured using the Ussing chamber system. Moreover, permeability in jejunum and ileum was similar to that in Caco-2 cells. In conclusion, the permeability in Caco-2 cells was equivalent to the permeability in rat jejunum and ileum determined with the Ussing system. Therefore, this newly developed cocktail assay and its application to the Ussing system can be a useful tool for robust and rapid screening for site-specific permeability in rat intestine, thus accelerating the prediction of absorption of new chemical entities.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.53 no.6
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• pp.653-662
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• 2009

Developing effective tools for predicting absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion properties and toxicity (ADME/T) of new chemical entities in the early stage of drug design is one of the most important tasks in drug discovery and development today. As one of these attempts, support vector machines (SVM) has recently been exploited for the prediction of ADME/T related properties. However, two problems in SVM modeling, i.e. feature selection and parameters setting, are still far from solved. The two problems have been shown to be crucial to the efficiency and accuracy of SVM classification. In particular, the feature selection and optimal SVM parameters setting influence each other, which indicates that they should be dealt with simultaneously. In this account, we present an integrated practical solution, in which genetic-based algorithm (GA) is used for feature selection and grid search (GS) method for parameters optimization. hERG ion-channel inhibitor classification models of ADME/T related properties has been built for assessing and testing the proposed GA-GS-SVM. We generated 6 different models that are 3 different single models and 3 different ensemble models using training set - 1891 compounds and validated with external test set - 175 compounds. We compared single model with ensemble model to solve data imbalance problems. It was able to improve accuracy of prediction to use ensemble model.

• Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.183-189
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• 2008

The present study compared the feasibility of Caco-2 and MDCK cells as an efficient in-vitro model for the drug classification based on Biopharmaceutics Classification System (BCS) as well as an in-vitro model for drug interactions mediated by P-gp inhibition or P-gp induction. Thirteen model drugs were selected to cover BCS Class I{\sim}IV$ and their membrane permeability values were evaluated in both Caco-2 and MDCK cells. P-gp inhibition studies were conducted by using vinblastine and verapamil in MDCK cells. P-gp induction studies were also performed in MDCK cells using rifampin and the P-gp expression level was determined by western blot analysis. Compared to Caco-2 cells, MDCK cells required shorter period of time to culture cells before running the transport study. Both Caco-2 and MDCK cells exhibited the same rank order relationship between in-vitro permeability values and human permeability values of all tested model compounds, implying that those in-vitro models may be useful in the prediction of human permeability (rank order) of new chemical entities at the early drug discovery stage. However, in the case of BCS drug classification, Caco-2 cells appeared to be more suitable than MDCK cells. P-gp induction by rifampin was negligible in MDCK-cells while MDCK cells appeared to be feasible for P-gp inhibition studies. Taken all together, the present study suggests that Caco-2 cells might be more applicable to the BCS drug classification than MDCK-cells, although MDCK cells may provide some advantage in terms of capacity and speed in early ADME screening process.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.47-50
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• 2013

An ultra-fast generic LC-MS/MS method was developed for high-throughput quantification of discovery pharmacokinetic (PK) samples and its reliability was verified. The method involves a simple protein precipitation for sample preparation and the analysis by ultra-fast generic LC-MS/MS with the ballistic gradient program and selected reaction monitoring (SRM) mode. Approximately 290 new chemical entities (NCEs) (over 10,000 samples) from 5 therapeutic programs were analyzed. The calibration curves showed good linearity in the concentration range of 1, 2 or 5 to 2000 ng/mL. No significant ion suppression was observed in the elution region of all the NCEs. When approximately 300 plasma samples were continuously analyzed, the peak area of internal standard was constant and reproducible. In the repeated analysis of samples, the plasma concentrations and the area under the curve (AUC) were consistent with the results from the first analysis. These results showed that the present ultra-fast generic LC-MS/MS method is reliable in terms of selectivity, sensitivity, and reproducibility and could be useful for high-throughput quantification and other bioanalysis in drug discovery.

• Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.191-199
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• 2000

Genomics is providing targets faster than we can validate them and combinatorial chemistry is providing new chemical entities faster than we can screen them. Historically, the drug discovery cascade has been established as a sequential process initiated with a potency screening against a selected biological target. In this sequential process, pharmacokinetics was often regarded as a low-throughput activity. Typically, limited pharmacokinetics studies would be conducted prior to acceptance of a compound for safety evaluation and, as a result, compounds often failed to reach a clinical testing due to unfavorable pharmacokinetic characteristics. A new paradigm in drug discovery has emerged in which the entire sample collection is rapidly screened using robotized high-throughput assays at the outset of the program. Higher-throughput pharmacokinetics (HTPK) is being achieved through introduction of new techniques, including automation for sample preparation and new experimental approaches. A number of in vitro and in vivo methods are being developed for the HTPK. In vitro studies, in which many cell lines are used to screen absorption and metabolism, are generally faster than in vivo screening, and, in this sense, in vitro screening is often considered as a real HTPK. Despite the elegance of the in vitro models, however, in vivo screenings are always essential for the final confirmation. Among these in vivo methods, cassette dosing technique, is believed the methods that is applicable in the screening of pharmacokinetics of many compounds at a time. The widespread use of liquid chromatography (LC) interfaced to mass spectrometry (MS) or tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) allowed the feasibility of the cassette dosing technique. Another approach to increase the throughput of in vivo screening of pharmacokinetics is to reduce the number of sample analysis. Two common approaches are used for this purpose. First, samples from identical study designs but that contain different drug candidate can be pooled to produce single set of samples, thus, reducing sample to be analyzed. Second, for a single test compound, serial plasma samples can be pooled to produce a single composite sample for analysis. In this review, we validated the issue whether the second method can be applied to practical screening of in vivo pharmacokinetics using data from seven of our previous bioequivalence studies. For a given drug, equally spaced serial plasma samples were pooled to achieve a 'Pooled Concentration' for the drug. An area under the plasma drug concentration-time curve (AUC) was then calculated theoretically using the pooled concentration and the predicted AUC value was statistically compared with the traditionally calculated AUC value. The comparison revealed that the sample pooling method generated reasonably accurate AUC values when compared with those obtained by the traditional approach. It is especially noteworthy that the accuracy was obtained by the analysis of only one sample instead of analyses of a number of samples that necessitates a significant man-power and time. Thus, we propose the sample pooling method as an alternative to in vivo pharmacokinetic approach in the selection potential lead(s) from combinatorial libraries.

• Natural Product Sciences
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.1-15
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• 2002

An International Cooperative Biodiversity Group (ICBG) program based at the University of Illinois at Chicago initiated its activities in 1998, with the following specific objectives: (a) inventory and conservation of of plants of Cuc Phuong National Park in Vietnam and of medicinal plants of Laos; (b) drug discovery (and development) based on plants of Vietnam and Laos; and (c) economic development of communities participating in the ICBG project both in Vietnam and Laos. Member-institutions and an industrial partner of this ICBG are bound by a Memorandum of Agreement that recognizes property and intellectual property rights, prior informed consent for access to genetic resources and to indigenous knowledge, the sharing of benefits that may arise from the drug discovery effort, and the provision of short-term and long-term benefits to host country institutions and communities. The drug discovery effort is targeted to the search for agents for therapies against malaria (antimalarial assay of plant extracts, using Plasmodium falciparum clones), AIDS (anti-HIV-l activity using HOG.R5 reporter cell line (through transactivation of the green fluorescent protein/GFP gene), cancer (screening of plant extracts in 6 human tumor cell lines - KB, Col-2, LU-l, LNCaP, HUVEC, hTert-RPEl), tuberculosis (screening of extracts in the microplate Alamar Blue assay against Mycobacterium tuberculosis $H_{37}Ra\;and\;H_{37}Rv),$ all performed at UIC, and CNS-related diseases (with special focus on Alzheimer's disease, pain and rheumatoid arthritis, and asthma), peformed at Glaxo Smith Kline (UK). Source plants were selected based on two approaches: biodiversity-based (plants of Cuc Phuong National Park) and ethnobotany-based (medicinal plants of Cuc Phuong National Park in Vietnam and medicinal plants of Laos). At mc, as of July, 2001, active leads had been identified in the anti-HIV, anticancer, antimalarial, and anti- TB assay, after the screening of more than 800 extracts. At least 25 biologically active compounds have been isolated, 13 of which are new with anti-HIV activity, and 3 also new with antimalarial activity. At GSK of 21 plant samples with a history of use to treat CNS-related diseases tested to date, a number showed activity against one or more of the CNS assay targets used, but no new compounds have been isolated. The results of the drug discovery effort to date indicate that tropical plant diversity of Vietnam and Laos unquestionably harbors biologically active chemical entities, which, through further research, may eventually yield candidates for drug development. Although the substantial monetary benefit of the drug discovery process (royalties) is a long way off, the UIC ICBG program provides direct and real-term benefits to host country institutions and communities.