The debate on animal ADME studies in drug development: an update

Deuterium- and Tritium-Labelled Compounds: Applications in the Life Sciences

Hydrogen isotopes are unique tools for identifying and understanding biological and chemical processes. Hydrogen isotope labelling allows for the traceless and direct incorporation of an additional mass or radioactive tag into an organic molecule with almost no changes in its chemical structure, physical properties, or biological activity. Using deuterium-labelled isotopologues to study the unique mass-spectrometric patterns generated from mixtures of biologically relevant molecules drastically simplifies analysis. Such methods are now providing unprecedented levels of insight in a wide and continuously growing range of applications in the life sciences and beyond. Tritium (³ H), in particular, has seen an increase in utilization, especially in pharmaceutical drug discovery. The efforts and costs associated with the synthesis of labelled compounds are more than compensated for by the enhanced molecular sensitivity during analysis and the high reliability of the data obtained. In this Review, advances in the application of hydrogen isotopes in the life sciences are described.

In vitro to in vivo extrapolation for high throughput prioritization and decision making

In vitro chemical safety testing methods offer the potential for efficient and economical tools to provide relevant assessments of human health risk. To realize this potential, methods are needed to relate in vitro effects to in vivo responses, i.e., in vitro to in vivo extrapolation (IVIVE). Currently available IVIVE approaches need to be refined before they can be utilized for regulatory decision-making. To explore the capabilities and limitations of IVIVE within this context, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Research and Development and the National Toxicology Program Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods co-organized a workshop and webinar series. Here, we integrate content from the webinars and workshop to discuss activities and resources that would promote inclusion of IVIVE in regulatory decision-making. We discuss properties of models that successfully generate predictions of in vivo doses from effective in vitro concentration, including the experimental systems that provide input parameters for these models, areas of success, and areas for improvement to reduce model uncertainty. Finally, we provide case studies on the uses of IVIVE in safety assessments, which highlight the respective differences, information requirements, and outcomes across various approaches when applied for decision-making.

Evaluation and calibration of high-throughput predictions of chemical distribution to tissues

Toxicokinetics (TK) provides critical information for integrating chemical toxicity and exposure assessments in order to determine potential chemical risk (i.e., the margin between toxic doses and plausible exposures). For thousands of chemicals that are present in our environment, in vivo TK data are lacking. The publicly available R package "httk" (version 1.8, named for "high throughput TK") draws from a database of in vitro data and physico-chemical properties in order to run physiologically-based TK (PBTK) models for 553 compounds. The PBTK model parameters include tissue:plasma partition coefficients (Kp) which the httk software predicts using the model of Schmitt (Toxicol In Vitro 22 (2):457-467, 2008). In this paper we evaluated and modified httk predictions, and quantified confidence using in vivo literature data. We used 964 rat Kp measured by in vivo experiments for 143 compounds. Initially, predicted Kp were significantly larger than measured Kp for many lipophilic compounds (log10 octanol:water partition coefficient > 3). Hence the approach for predicting Kp was revised to account for possible deficiencies in the in vitro protein binding assay, and the method for predicting membrane affinity was revised. These changes yielded improvements ranging from a factor of 10 to nearly a factor of 10,000 for 83 Kp across 23 compounds with only 3 Kp worsening by more than a factor of 10. The vast majority (92%) of Kp were predicted within a factor of 10 of the measured value (overall root mean squared error of 0.59 on log10-transformed scale). After applying the adjustments, regressions were performed to calibrate and evaluate the predictions for 12 tissues. Predictions for some tissues (e.g., spleen, bone, gut, lung) were observed to be better than predictions for other tissues (e.g., skin, brain, fat), indicating that confidence in the application of in silico tools to predict chemical partitioning varies depending upon the tissues involved. Our calibrated model was then evaluated using a second data set of human in vivo measurements of volume of distribution (Vss) for 498 compounds reviewed by Obach et al. (Drug Metab Dispos 36(7):1385-1405, 2008). We found that calibration of the model improved performance: a regression of the measured values as a function of the predictions has a slope of 1.03, intercept of - 0.04, and R2 of 0.43. Through careful evaluation of predictive methods for chemical partitioning into tissues, we have improved and calibrated these methods and quantified confidence for TK predictions in humans and rats.

Engineering large animal models of human disease

The recent development of gene editing tools and methodology for use in livestock enables the production of new animal disease models. These tools facilitate site‐specific mutation of the genome, allowing animals carrying known human disease mutations to be produced. In this review, we describe the various gene editing tools and how they can be used for a range of large animal models of diseases. This genomic technology is in its infancy but the expectation is that through the use of gene editing tools we will see a dramatic increase in animal model resources available for both the study of human disease and the translation of this knowledge into the clinic. Comparative pathology will be central to the productive use of these animal models and the successful translation of new therapeutic strategies. © 2015 The Authors. The Journal of Pathology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland.