Evaluation of enantioselective binding of fluoxetine to human serum albumin by ultrafiltration and CE - Experimental design and quality considerations

Do the enantiomers of ketamine bind enantioselectively to human serum albumin?

The binding of drugs to plasma proteins is an important process in the human body and has a significant influence on pharmacokinetic parameter. Human serum albumin (HSA) has the most important function as a transporter protein. The binding of ketamine to HSA has already been described in literature, but only of the racemate. The enantiomerically pure S-ketamine is used as injection solution for induction of anesthesia and has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the therapy of severe depression as a nasal spray in 2019. The question arises if there is enantioselective binding to HSA. Hence, the aim of this study was to investigate whether there is enantioselective binding of S-and R-ketamine to HSA or not. Ultrafiltration (UF) followed by chiral capillary electrophoretic analysis was used to determine the extent of protein binding. Bound fraction to HSA was 71.2 % and 64.9 % for enantiomerically pure R- and S-ketamine, respectively, and 66.5 % for the racemate. Detailed binding properties were studied by Saturation Transfer Difference (STD)-, waterLOGSY- and Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill (CPMG)-NMR spectroscopy. With all three methods, the aromatic ring and the N-methyl group could be identified as the structural moieties most strongly involved in binding of ketamine to HSA. pKaff values determined using UF and NMR indicate that ketamine is a weak affinity ligand to HSA and no significant differences in binding behavior were found between the individual enantiomers and the racemate.

Determination of plasma protein binding for sympathomimetic drugs by means of ultrafiltration

Ephedrine and its diastereomer pseudoephedrine have long been used in therapy and are part of over-the-counter combination drugs against colds or allergies. Nonetheless, there is scarcely any information on their plasma protein binding in literature. Plasma protein binding is an important parameter from a pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic point of view and can play a crucial role in therapy. The aim of this study was to determine the extent of plasma protein binding using ultrafiltration and different types of plasma proteins like human (HSA) and bovine serum albumin (BSA) and human serum. Two orthogonal methods - continuous and discontinuous ultrafiltration - were used to confirm our findings. To get some structural and stereochemical insights into binding affinity towards plasma proteins, all four stereoisomers of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine were included in this study. Since all four stereoisomers exhibit a low affinity towards albumin, other sympathomimetic drugs of structural similarity were tested to investigate the influence of the basic character of the Ephedra alkaloids in their binding to plasma proteins.

Modeling the chiral resolution ability of highly sulfated β-cyclodextrin for basic compounds in electrokinetic chromatography

Despite the fact that extensive research in the field of enantioseparations by capillary electrophoresis has been carried out, it is difficult to predict whether a concrete chiral selector would be useful for the separation of a racemic compound. Hence, several experimental effort is necessary to test the abilities of individual chiral selectors, usually by trial and error procedures. Thus, the enantioseparation of a new racemate becomes a time- and money-consuming task. In this work, the ability of highly sulfated β-cyclodextrin (HS-β-CD) as chiral selector in electrokinetic chromatography (EKC) is modeled for the first time, using exclusively directly-available structural data of forty compounds (structurally unrelated basic drugs and pesticides). A discriminant partial least squares (PLS)-based quantitative structure-property relationship (QSPR) approach is simplified, resulting in a consistent, predictive and descriptive model. It is converted into an explicit equation able to predict the enantioresolution level (Rs) of new compounds, from four structure properties available in an on-line open database: logarithm of octanol-water partition coefficient estimated at pH 7.4 (lgD), polar surface area (PSA), number of hydrogen bond donors (HBD) and acceptors (HBA). For the cases in which the model predicts good Rs only in concrete experimental conditions, a Box-Behnken experimental design is proposed for the fast PLS-based optimization of the most influential experimental variables: cyclodextrin concentration, temperature and pH.

Evaluation of enantioselective binding of propanocaine to human serum albumin by ultrafiltration and electrokinetic chromatography under intermediate precision conditions

Stereoselectivity in protein binding can have a significant effect on the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties of chiral drugs. In this paper, the enantioselective binding of propanocaine (PRO) enantiomers to human serum albumin (HSA), the most relevant plasmatic protein in view of stereoselectivity, has been evaluated by incubation and ultrafiltration of racemic PRO-HSA mixtures and chiral analysis of the bound and unbound fractions by electrokinetic chromatography using HSA as chiral selector. Experimental conditions for the separation of PRO enantiomers using HSA as chiral selector and electrokinetic chromatography have been optimised. Affinity constants and protein binding in percentage (PB) were obtained for both enantiomers of PRO, as well as the enantioselectivity (ES) to HSA. Data were obtained in two independent working sessions (days). The influence of the session and fraction processed factors were examined. A univariate direct-estimation approach was used facilitating outliers' identification and statistical comparison. Non-linear fitting of data was used to verify the stoichiometry and affinity estimations obtained by the direct approach. Robust statistics were applied to obtain reliable estimations of uncertainty, accounting for the factors (day and processed fraction), thus representing intermediate precision conditions. Mimicking in vivo experimental conditions, information unapproachable by in vivo experiments was obtained for PRO enantiomers interacting with HSA. For the first (E1) and the second (E2) eluted PRO enantiomers the results were: 1:1 stoichiometry, medium affinity constants, logK(E1)=3.20±0.16 and log K(E2)=3.40±0.14, medium protein binding percentage, PB=48.7 and 60.1% for E1 and E2, respectively, and moderate but significant enantioselectivity, ES=K(E2)/K(E1)=1.5±0.3.