Recent advances in drug transporter sciences: highlights from the year 2020

Abstract

Drug Metabolism Reviews has an impressive track record of providing scientific reviews in the area of xenobiotic biotransformation over 47 years. It has consistently proved to be resourceful to many scientists from pharmaceutical industry, academia, regulatory agencies working in diverse areas including enzymology, pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, and toxicology. Over the last 5 years Drug metabolism Reviews has annually published an industry commentary aimed to highlight novel insights and approaches that have made significant impacts on the field of biotransformation (led by Cyrus Khojasteh). We hope to continue this tradition by providing an overview of advances made in the field of drug transporters during 2020. The field of drug transporters is rapidly evolving as they play an essential role in drug absorption, distribution, clearance, and elimination. In this review, we have selected outstanding drug transporter articles that have significantly contributed to moving forward the field of transporter science with respect to translation and improved understanding of diverse aspects including uptake clearance, clinical biomarkers, induction, proteomics, emerging transporters, and tissue targeting. The theme of this review consists of a synopsis that summarizes each article followed by our commentary. The objective of this work is not to provide a comprehensive review but rather to exemplify novel insights and state-of-the-art highlights of recent research that have advanced our understanding of drug transporters in drug disposition. We are hopeful that this effort will prove useful to the scientific community and as such request feedback, and further extend an invitation to anyone interested in contributing to future reviews.

Keywords:

• Transporters
• biomarkers
• coproporphyrin I
• emerging transporters
• liver targeting
• OATP
• OATP2B1
• OCT1
• transporter induction
• proteomics

Acknowledgments

All the authors would like to thank Cyrus Khojasteh (Genentech) for his valuable discussion and guidance during the preparation of this manuscript. The authors also extend their thanks to Diane Ramsden (Takeda Pharmaceutical Company) for critical reading and constructive feedback on the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

All the authors hold common stocks in Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited.

Additional information

Funding

No funding to declare.