Partition coefficient metabolic clearance

Instead of using the oral bioavailability of a drug, one can attempt to correlate PM values with permeability coefficients generated from in situ perfused intestinal preparations. Here, one eliminates the complexities of liver metabolism, clearance, and formulation variables. Recently, this type of in vitro-in situ correlation has been conducted using the model peptides (described previously in Section V.B.2). The permeabilities of these model peptides were determined using a perfused rat intestinal preparation which involved cannulation of the mesenteric vein (Kim et al., 1993). With this preparation, it was possible to measure both the disappearance of the peptides from the intestinal perfusate and the appearance of the peptides in the mesenteric vein. Thus, clearance values (CLapp) could be calculated for each peptide. Knowing the effective surface area of the perfused rat ileum, the CLapp values could be converted to permeability coefficients (P). When the permeability coefficients of the model peptides were plotted as a function of the lipophilicity of the peptides, as measured by partition coefficients in octanol-water, a poor correlation (r2 = 0.02) was observed. A better correlation was observed between the permeabilities of these peptides and the number of potential hydrogen bonds the peptide can make with water (r2 = 0.56,... 

Stereoselectivity in the metabolism and percutaneous permeation, related to skin enzymatic activity, was reported for several compounds [23-28]. Stereoselectivity in permeation and cutaneous hydrolysis of several ester prodrugs of propranolol through hairless mouse skin was investigated [23]. The authors reported the stereoselective hydrolysis of propranolol prodrugs that is notably biased towards the R-isomer, which resulted in the enantioselective permeation. The lipophilicity of prodrugs, expressed as the partition coefficients, was found to affect the apparent skin permeability coefficients. The more lipophilic prodrugs readily entered into the stratum corneum, but their clearance into hydrophilic deeper strata (epidermis and dermis), where drug hydrolysis takes place, was much less effective. Unlike S-isomers, the R-isomers of propranolol esters were entirely hydrolyzed in epidermis and freely crossed the dermis strata. 

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