The limited intestinal absorption via paracellular pathway is responsible for the low oral bioavailability of doxorubicin

Abstract

1. Doxorubicin exhibited dose-independent pharmacokinetics after intravenous (5–20 mg/kg) and oral (20–100 mg/kg) administration to rats. Nearly all (82.1–99.7%) of the orally administered doxorubicin remained unabsorbed, and the hepatic first-pass extraction ratio and oral bioavailability of doxorubicin were approximately 0.5% and 1%, respectively. Based on these results, it is likely that the primary factor responsible for the low oral bioavailability of doxorubicin is the limited intestinal absorption, rather than the CYP3A4-mediated first-pass metabolism.

2. Moreover, the in vitro transport and cellular uptake studies using Caco-2 cell monolayers have revealed that doxorubicin crosses the intestinal epithelium primarily via the paracellular pathway (accounting for 85.6% of the overall absorptive transport) probably due to its physicochemical properties (hydrophilic cation; pK_a = 9.67, log P = −0.5). These results suggest that P-glycoprotein (P-gp)-mediated efflux activity does not play a significant role in limiting the intestinal absorption of doxorubicin, attenuating the absorptive transport by only 5.56–13.2%.

3. Taken together, the present study demonstrated that the limited and paracellular intestinal absorption of doxorubicin was a major factor responsible for its low oral bioavailability, restricting the role of CYP3A4-mediated first-pass metabolism and P-gp-mediated efflux.

• Bioavailability
• Caco-2 cells
• doxorubicin
• intestinal absorption
• paracellular transport
• rats

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korean government (MEST) (No. 2011-0030635) and the MarineBio Research Program (NRF-C1ABA001-2011-0018561).