Cell Cultures for Assessment of Intestinal Permeability

The most commonly used methods for studies of partitioning into a membrane, mechanisms of drug absorption, and interactions with epithelial proteins, such as transporters and enzymes, are the cell culture-based models. These are both sim- 

The main reasons for the popularity of the Caco-2 cell line are that the cells are easy to maintain in culture, and they develop unusually high degree of differentiation spontaneously under standard culture conditions. In fact, Caco-2 is the only human intestinal cell line that has been found so far spontaneously to undergo functional enterocytic differentiation. The cells exhibit a good reproducibility, robustness and functional properties of human intestinal epithelial cells. The model has proved capable of predicting the oral absorption of a variety of drug compounds [see references in 10]. 

Several active transport systems that are normally found in the small intestinal enterocytes have been characterized in the Caco-2 cell model [13]. These include transport systems for glucose [32, 33], amino acids [34-37], dipeptides [38-40], vitamins [41], and bile acids [42, 43]. 

The expression of the active transport systems is time-dependent and may vary with nutritional conditions [53, 54]. The culturing conditions, e.g., the passaging process, can dramatically alter the biological characteristics and transport properties of Caco-2 cell monolayers [55-58]. 

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The introduction of new technologies in recent years is increasing the throughput of ADME studies during the drug discovery process. The advent of cell culture techniques in recent years has facilitated the assessment of intestinal permeability for many drugs. A notable example is the use of CaCO-2 cells, an immortalized human colon adenocarcinoma cell line... 

The identification and characterization of cell culture systems (e.g., Caco-2-cells) that mimic in vivo biological barriers (e.g., intestinal mucosa) have afforded pharmaceutical scientists the opportunity to rapidly and efficiently assess the permeability of drugs through these barriers in vitro. The results generated from these types of in vitro studies are generally expressed as effective permeability coefficients (Pe). If Pe is properly corrected to account for the barrier effects of the filter (PF) and the aqueous boundary layer (PAbl) as previously described in Section II.C, the results provide the permeability coefficient for the cell monolayer... 

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