Development of In Vitro and In Vivo Evaluation Systems for Vitamin D Derivatives and Their Application to Drug Discovery.

We have developed an in vitro system to easily examine the affinity for vitamin D receptor (VDR) and CYP24A1-mediated metabolism as two methods of assessing vitamin D derivatives. Vitamin D derivatives with high VDR affinity and resistance to CYP24A1-mediated metabolism could be good therapeutic agents. This system can effectively select vitamin D derivatives with these useful properties. We have also developed an in vivo system including a gene-deficient rat (a type I rickets model), a -gene-deficient rat (a type II rickets model), and a rat with a mutant (R270L) (another type II rickets model) using a genome editing method. For -gene-deficient and mutant (R270L) rats, amelioration of rickets symptoms can be used as an index of the efficacy of vitamin D derivatives. gene-deficient rats can be used to assess the activities of vitamin D derivatives specialized for actions not mediated by VDR. One of our original vitamin D derivatives, which displays high affinity VDR binding and resistance to CYP24A1-dependent metabolism, has shown good therapeutic effects in (R270L) rats, although further analysis is needed.