Maurer Christine K, Fang Zhizhou, Duevel Heide M, Harlfinger Stephanie, Petersson Carl
NCE DMPK, Merck Healthcare KGaA, Frankfurter Straße 250, 64293 Darmstadt, Germany.
Pharmaceuticals (Basel). 2025 Apr 14;18(4):568. doi: 10.3390/ph18040568.
Extrapolation of intrinsic clearance from in vitro systems such as liver microsomes or hepatocytes is an established approach to predict clearance in preclinical species and in humans. A common discussion in the literature is whether the predictive accuracy of such extrapolations is influenced by the chemotype and whether these methods are also applicable to compounds studied in early drug discovery programs. Compounds in such programs are frequently lipophilic and show low solubility and low free fraction in plasma, which may pose challenges to the extrapolation of clearance different from those of the final clinical candidates. A similar discussion has been raised about compounds residing beyond the traditional small-molecule property space, such as PROTACs© and other molecules incompatible with Lipinski's rule-of-five. To further enlighten the field on these matters, we present a study comparing the predictive accuracy between mouse hepatocytes and microsomes for a set of molecules (N = 211) from the Merck Healthcare drug discovery pipeline. This set was dominated by compounds belonging to class 2 and 4 of the extended clearance classification systems (ECCS). It contained a similar proportion of molecules compliant with the Lipinski rule-of-five (N = 127) and molecules lacking such compliance (N = 84). This study showed no or little differences in predictive accuracy nor bias between the two groups, with an average fold error close to 1, an absolute average fold error of just over 2, and around 50% being within 2-fold and >90% being within 5-fold of the predicted unbound clearance in both in vitro systems. Furthermore, no significant differences in accuracy were observed for compounds with an extremely low free fraction (down to 0.05%) in plasma. The accuracy of in vitro-in vivo extrapolation of female CD-1 mouse clearance was not affected by the physicochemical properties.
从肝微粒体或肝细胞等体外系统推断内在清除率是预测临床前物种和人类清除率的既定方法。文献中常见的讨论是,这种推断的预测准确性是否受化学类型影响,以及这些方法是否也适用于早期药物发现项目中研究的化合物。此类项目中的化合物通常具有亲脂性,在血浆中溶解度低且游离分数低,这可能给清除率推断带来不同于最终临床候选药物的挑战。对于超出传统小分子性质空间的化合物,如蛋白水解靶向嵌合体(PROTACs)和其他不符合Lipinski五规则的分子,也提出了类似的讨论。为了进一步阐明该领域在这些问题上的情况,我们进行了一项研究,比较了默克医疗保健公司药物发现管道中的一组分子(N = 211)在小鼠肝细胞和微粒体之间的预测准确性。该组主要由扩展清除率分类系统(ECCS)的2类和4类化合物组成。它包含符合Lipinski五规则的分子(N = 127)和不符合该规则的分子(N = 84)的比例相似。这项研究表明,两组之间在预测准确性或偏差方面没有或几乎没有差异,平均倍数误差接近1,绝对平均倍数误差略高于2,并且在两个体外系统中,约50%的预测未结合清除率在2倍以内,>90%在5倍以内。此外,对于血浆中游离分数极低(低至0.05%)的化合物,未观察到准确性上的显著差异。雌性CD-1小鼠清除率的体外-体内外推准确性不受物理化学性质的影响。