Physiologically based pharmacokinetic modeling of candesartan related to CYP2C9 genetic polymorphism in adult and pediatric patients.

Candesartan cilexetil is an angiotensin II receptor blocker and it is widely used to treat hypertension and heart failure. This drug is a prodrug that rapidly converts to candesartan after oral administration. Candesartan is metabolized by cytochrome P450 2C9 (CYP2C9) enzyme or uridine diphosphate glucurinosyltransferase 1A3, or excreted in an unchanged form through urine, biliary tract and feces. We investigated the effect of genetic polymorphism of CYP2C9 enzyme on drug pharmacokinetics using physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling. In addition, by introducing the age and ethnicity into the model, we developed a model that can propose an appropriate dosage regimen taking into account the individual characteristics of each patient. To evaluate the suitability of the model, the results of a clinical trial on twenty-two healthy Korean subjects and their CYP2C9 genetic polymorphism data was applied. In this study, PK-Sim® was used to develop the PBPK model of candesartan.