This study was designed to elucidate the pharmacokinetics, absorption, tissue distribution and plasma protein binding properties of tanshinone IIA, a highly lipophilic compound isolated from Salvia miltiorrhiza. Tanshinone IIA was isolated using a previously well developed LC-MS/MS method. Its pharmacokinetic characteristics, absolute bioavailability, tissue distribution and plasma protein binding properties were determined. The membrane permeability was evaluated using Caco-2 cells in monolayer. The pharmacokinetic plasma profile of tanshinone IIA after a single intravenous dosing exhibited a triexponential pattern consisting of rapid distribution (t1/2 alpha, 0.024 h), slow redistribution (t1/2 beta, 0.34 h) and terminal elimination phase (t1/2 gamma, 7.5 h). Tanshinone IIA preferentially distributed into the reticuloendothelial system, especially into liver and lung, after either intravenous or oral doses. Tanshinone IIA (99.2 %) bound highly to plasma proteins, among which lipoprotein played an important role (77.5 %). Tanshinone IIA absorption was extremely poor with an absolute bioavailability below 3.5 %. Absorptive saturation was deduced from the fact that the AUC and Cmax increased less proportionally to dose and Tmax was significantly prolonged. The poor absorption of tanshinone IIA may be caused by its low aqueous solubility and limited membrane permeability. There were no significant differences of the apparent permeability coefficient for all tested concentrations and for the apical to basolateral and reverse direction transport, suggesting a passive transport mode and no involvement of an efflux protein. In conclusion, tanshinone IIA has a suitable pharmacokinetic behavior except for its poor absorption. A pharmaceutical strategy for promoting its absorption should be designed to develop tanshinone IIA as a new drug candidate.

Quinones represent a very important class of compounds found in nature and for the chemically synthesized drugs. The present study was designed to elucidate the intestinal first pass metabolic pathways in vivo and in vitro, of tanshinone IIA (TS), a derivative of phenanthrene-quinone isolated from Salvia miltiorrhiza. Five metabolites, proposed to be TS catechol glucuronides (two position isomers), dehydrotanshinone IIA and its two catechol glucuronides, were identified from the rat intestinal homogenates after oral administration of TS. TS metabolism was further conducted in the subcellular system including cytosol, microsomes, mitochondrial and S9 under both phase I and phase II metabolic conditions. TS underwent negligible metabolism in all of the subcellular systems under phase I metabolic condition using NADPH as the cofactor. However, significant and substantial metabolic elimination of TS was observed in the cytosol and S9 fractions, while not in the microsomes fractions, when both NADPH and UDPGA were added. Two TS catechol glucuronides were identified from such an in vitro metabolic medium. Dicoumarol, a specific inhibitor of the NAD(P)H dependent quinone oxidoreductase (NQO1), significantly inhibited the metabolic elimination of TS in a noncompetitive way, suggesting that NQO1 was responsible for the quinone reduction of TS to form the catechol intermediate. The catechol intermediate failed to be detected directly was proved to be highly unstable and autoxidized back to TS accompanied with hydrogen peroxide generation. Dicoumarol exhibited a significant inhibitory effect on the hydrogen peroxide generation, further supporting that the reduction of TS was catalyzed by NQO1. The absolute bioavailability of TS was significantly enhanced by oral dicoumarol pretreatment. In conclusion, a novel intestinal metabolic pathway for quinones, NQO1 mediated reduction and subsequent glucuronidation, was determined using TS as a model compound. This study should be helpful for the general understanding of quinones absorption and intestinal first pass metabolism.

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In this paper, we highlight that it is inadequate to describe the rotation of the state of polarization (RSOP) in a fiber channel with the 2-parameter description model, which was mostly used in the literature. This inadequate model may result in problems in polarization demultiplexing (PolDemux) because the RSOP in a fiber channel is actually a 3-parameter issue that will influence the state of polarization (SOP) of the optical signal propagating in the fiber and is different from the 2-parameter SOP itself. Considering three examples of the 2-parameter RSOP models typically used in the literature, we provide an in-depth analysis of the reasons why the 2-parameter RSOP model cannot represent the RSOP in the fiber channel and the problems that arise for PolDemux in the coherent optical receiver. We present a 3-parameter solution for the RSOP in the fiber channel. Based on this solution, we propose a DSP tracking and equalization scheme for the fast time-varying RSOP using the extended Kalman filter (EKF). The proposed scheme is proved to be universal and can solve all the PolDemux problems based on the 2- or 3-parameter RSOP model and exhibits good performance in the time-varying RSOP scenarios.

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