Characterization of in vitro metabolites from human liver microsomes using directly coupled hplc-nmr: application to a phenoxathiin monoamine oxidase-A inhibitor

Magnetic resonance methods and applications in pharmaceutical research

This review presents an overview of some recent magnetic resonance (MR) techniques for pharmaceutical research. MR is noninvasive, and does not expose subjects to ionizing radiation. Some methods that have been used in pharmaceutical research MR include magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods, among them, diffusion-weighted MRI, perfusion-weighted MRI, functional MRI, molecular imaging and contrast-enhance MRI. Some applications of MR in pharmaceutical research include MR in metabonomics, in vivo MRS, studies in cerebral ischemia and infarction, degenerative joint diseases, oncology, cardiovascular disorders, respiratory diseases and skin diseases. Some of these techniques, such as cardiac and joint imaging, or brain fMRI are standard, and are providing relevant data routinely. Skin MR and hyperpolarized gas lung MRI are still experimental. In conclusion, considering the importance of finding and characterizing biomarkers for improved drug evaluation, it can be expected that the use of MR techniques in pharmaceutical research is going to increase in the near future.

High-throughput screening for stability and inhibitory activity of compounds toward cytochrome P450-mediated metabolism

With the advent of combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput screening technology, thousands of molecules can now be rapidly synthesized and screened for biological activity against large numbers of protein targets, greatly increasing the speed with which lead compounds are identified during the early stages of drug discovery. However, rapid optimization of parameters that determine whether a high-affinity ligand or a potent inhibitor will become a successful drug remains a challenge in improving the efficiency of the drug discovery process. Parameters that define absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion properties of drug candidates are important determinants of therapeutic efficacy, and thus should be optimized during early stages of drug discovery. Although the speed with which drugs are screened for properties such as absorption, cytochrome P450 (CYP) inhibition, and metabolic stability has increased over the past several years, the screening rate/capacity is still several orders of magnitude lower than those for high-throughput methods used in lead identification, resulting in a bottleneck in the drug discovery process. This review discusses current methods used in the in vitro screening of drugs for their stability toward CYP-mediated oxidative metabolism. This is a critical screen in the drug discovery process because metabolism by CYP represents an important clearance mechanism for the vast majority of compounds, thus affecting their oral bioavailability and/or duration of action.

LC-NMR-MS in drug discovery

Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) is arguably the most versatile analytical platform for complex mixture analysis. Specifically, interfacing liquid chromatography with parallel NMR and mass spectrometry (LC-NMR-MS) gives comprehensive structural data on metabolites of novel drugs in development. Applications in natural product, combinatorial chemistry and drug metabolism studies are reviewed. Microcoil probes and capillary separation methods have enormous potential. Recent innovations to improve NMR detection limits include CryoFlowProbes and on-line solid-phase extraction (LC-SPE-NMR). These state-of-the-art analytical platforms are widely applicable to identifying novel candidate drugs from diverse complex mixtures within a drug discovery strategy.

Separation and identification methods for metalloproteinase inhibitors

Metalloproteinase inhibitors are being explored for the treatment of a wide variety of human diseases including cancers, arthritis, cardiovascular disorders, human immunodeficiency virus infection, and central nervous system illnesses. This review provides an overview of various analytical sample preparation, separation, detection, and identification techniques employed for the quantitative and qualitative determination of these inhibitor compounds. Special emphasis is placed on biological sample preparation by automated solid-phase extraction, liquid-liquid extraction, and protein precipitation by centrifugation or filtration. Other sample preparation methodologies are also evaluated. Applications of high-performance liquid chromatography. gas chromatography, and capillary electrophoresis to the quantitative determination of metalloproteinase inhibitors are described. Examples of qualitative analysis of metalloproteinase inhibitors by hyphenated liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance are also presented. The advantages and limitations of these separation and identification methodologies as well as other less frequently employed techniques are assessed and discussed.

Structural characterization of the oxidative degradation products of an antifungal agent SCH 56592 by LC–NMR and LC–MS

LC-NMR and LC-MS were used to characterize the structures of four major degradation products of SCH 56592, an antifungal drug candidate in clinical trials. These compounds were formed under stress conditions in which the bulk drug substance was heated in air at 150 degrees C for 12 days, and were separated from SCH 56592 as a mixture using a semi-preparative HPLC method. The data from LC-NMR, LC-ESI-MS (electrospray ionization mass spectrometry) and LC-ESI-MS/MS indicate that the oxidation occurred at the piperazine ring in the center of the drug molecule. The structures of the degradation products were determined from the 1H NMR spectra obtained via LC-NMR, which were supported by LC-ESI-MS and LC-ESI-MS/MS analyses. A novel degradation pathway of SCH 56592 was proposed based on these characterized structures.

Directly coupled HPLC-NMR and HPLC-NMR-MS in pharmaceutical research and development

The methodology for the direct coupling of HPLC with NMR spectroscopy and the simultaneous double coupling of HPLC with NMR and mass spectrometry (MS) is described. Indications of the necessary technical developments to achieve this are given, and the applications of these new techniques to studies of pharmaceutical relevance are reviewed. These include studies of combinatorial chemistry libraries, synthetic chemical impurities, characterisation of drug mixtures, identification of natural products of possible pharmaceutical interest and identification of xenobiotic metabolites in human, animal and in vitro systems. In addition, HPLC-NMR has been used to investigate xenobiotic metabolite reactivity. Finally, the potential future directions of the techniques are discussed.

Hyphenated HPLC-NMR and its applications in drug discovery

Hyphenated HPLC-NMR is a fast growing technology, allowing rapid and detailed structural characterization of unknown mixtures. The technical aspects of the technology are reviewed on the basis of system configuration, operation, solvent suppression, HPLC and NMR optimization, and detection. The combined use of HPLC-NMR and HPLC-MS is also described and discussed. Various applications of HPLC-NMR and integrated HPLC-NMR-MS in drug discovery, especially in the separation and structure elucidation of drug impurities, reaction mixtures, degradation products, in vitro and in vivo metabolites, and combinatorial library samples, are illustrated.

Application of LC-NMR and LC-MS to the identification of degradation products of a protease inhibitor in dosage formulations

LC-NMR and LC-MS were applied to the characterization of six degradation products of a protease inhibitor, N-hydroxy-1,3-di-[4-ethoxybenzenesulphonyl]-5,5-dimethyl-[1,3]c yclohexyldiazine-2-carboxamide, in a dosage formulation. A reversed-phase HPLC method was developed for the separation of the parent compound and its six degradation products. LC-MS was then utilized to obtain the molecular weight and fragmentation information using an electrospray ionization (ESI) interface in the positive ion mode. LC-NMR was employed to acquire detailed structural information using a selective solvent suppression pulse sequence in the stop flow mode. This work demonstrated the usefulness of this integrated approach for the rapid and unambiguous identification of drug compounds and their degradation products in dosage formulations.

Nuclear magnetic resonance chromatography: applications of pulse field gradient diffusion NMR to mixture analysis and ligand-receptor interactions

Pulse field gradient (PFG) diffusion NMR spectroscopy is a non-invasive method for the spectroscopic separation and identification of compounds of interest from a mixture. Because it relies on differences in translational diffusion rates to resolve NMR signals from individual components, pulse field gradient NMR is a unique method for analyzing complex mixtures and for detecting intermolecular interactions. A number of multidimensional pulse field gradient NMR experiments have been developed to alleviate the overlap of NMR signals arising from a complex mixture and facilitate component identification. The applications of pulse field gradient NMR for mixture analysis and for the direct identification of high affinity ligands are reviewed.

The use of preparative high performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometric directed fraction collection for the isolation and characterisation of drug metabolites in urine by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and liquid chromatography/sequential mass spectrometry

Preparative high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled to tandem mass spectrometry has been used successfully for the isolation of several drug metabolites from urine. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has been employed to determine the exact chemical structure of these metabolites. The use of preparative HPLC has allowed the isolation of relatively large quantities of drug metabolites (> 0.5 mg) allowing insensitive, information-rich NMR experiments such as NOE, HMBC and HMQC to be performed. The coupling of the ion-trap mass spectrometer, operating in automatic MS/MS mode, to preparative HPLC allows the simultaneous collection and mass spectrometric analysis of eluting analytes to be performed, thus allowing the position of fractions containing drug-related material to be identified very rapidly.

750 MHz HPLC-NMR spectroscopic identification of rat microsomal metabolites of phenoxypyridines

Directly coupled 750 MHz HPLC-1H NMR spectroscopy has been applied to the characterisation of low level metabolites of 3-amino-2-(2-fluorophenoxy)pyridine (AP) and 3-nitro-2-(2-fluorophenoxy)pyridine (NP) in rat microsomes. In stop-flow HPLC-NMR mode, the direct injection of microsomal extracts enabled the separation and characterisation of minor metabolites. NP is converted into AP to an extent of 93.4% and this is further metabolised to 4- and 6-hydroxy-AP (6 and 0.6% respectively). Unequivocal identification of these metabolites was achieved without the use of a radiolabel or synthetic standards and thus demonstrates the applicability of directly coupled HPLC-NMR to metabolite identification in in vitro systems. The potential exists for HPLC-NMR and HPLC-NMR-MS to provide rapid metabolic information within the timescale of high throughput lead optimisation exercises in drug discovery.

Investigation of the feasibility of directly-coupled HPLC-NMR with 2H detection with application to the metabolism of N-dimethylformamide-d7

The use of 2H NMR spectroscopy as a detector for HPLC has been investigated using the continuous flow method in which rat urine containing metabolites of N-dimethylformamide-d7 was employed as a test case. Three xenobiotic-related species, including DMF-d7 itself, were detected. It is shown that for small molecules which give relatively sharp 2H NMR resonances, 2H HPLC-NMR spectroscopy is a feasible technique. For larger molecules, the resulting broad lines are likely to preclude the determination of detailed structural information. However, extension of the approach is possible by the use of selectively 2H-labelled xenobiotics to determine HPLC retention times of metabolites with continuous-flow 2H NMR spectroscopy detection, followed by stop-flow 1H HPLC-NMR spectroscopy for structural characterisation.

Synthesis, isolation and identification of glucuronides and mercapturic acids of a novel antiparasitic agent, licochalcone A

1. Four glucuronic acid conjugates of licochalcone A (Lica), and their metabolites, have been synthesized using rabbit and pig liver microsomes and purified by preparative hplc. 2. The glucuronides were identified as E-Lica 4'-O-beta-glucuronide, E and Z-Lica 4-O-beta-glucuronide and a mono-glucuronide conjugate of a beta-hydroxylated Lica metabolite. The metabolites were identified by hplc-nmr (one and two-dimensional nmr) as well as hplc-ms. 3. At pH 8.5 Lica reacted with N-acetyl-L-cysteine giving the two epimeric conjugates, which were then isolated by preparative hplc and identified by one and two-dimensional nmr spectroscopic methods. 4. Only two glucuronic acid conjugates (E- and Z-Lica 4-O-beta-glucuronide) were found in the urine of rat after i.p. administration of a single dose of Lica.