In vivo-in vitro correlation of antitumor activity of heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) inhibitors with a pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics analysis using NCI-N87 xenograft mice

Abstract

1. The in vitro antitumor activity (e.g. IC₅₀) of anticancer drugs is important for selecting candidate compounds for in vivo drug efficacy study in the early stage of drug discovery. In this study, we investigated the relationship between in vitro IC₅₀ and in vivo EC₅₀ using six heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) inhibitors.

2. IC₅₀ of each compound was calculated from in vitro cell proliferation assays using the NCI-N87 cancer cell line. Each compound was administered to NCI-N87 xenograft mice, and EC₅₀ and the maximum tumour-killing rate constant were calculated from pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics analyses using plasma concentrations and tumour volumes.

3. IC₅₀ obtained in vitro was poorly correlated with EC₅₀ obtained in vivo, while a good correlation (r = 0.856) was observed between them when corrected with the unbound fraction ratio.

4. The results of this study using of HSP90 inhibitors as model compounds suggest importance of the consideration of an unbound fraction to evaluate the relationship between IC₅₀ and EC₅₀. These results will contribute to improvement in the prediction accuracy of in vivo drug efficacy from in vitro activity and the efficiency of drug discovery research.

Keywords:

• In vitro/in vivo correlation (IVIVC)
• heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) inhibitor
• antitumor drug
• IC₅₀
• EC₅₀
• unbound fraction pharmacokinetics pharmacodynamics

Acknowledgments

We thank Fumie Sawamura for excellent technical assistance. We also thank Taiji Miyake, Toshihiko Fujii, Toshikazu Yamazaki, Osamu Kondoh, Toshiyuki Mio, Takuo Tsukuda and Motohiro Kato for their expert advice and helpful discussions and Jacob Davis for useful advice in the preparation of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).