ABSTRACT:The aim of this study was to assess a physiologically based modeling approach for predicting drug metabolism, tissue distribution, and bioavailability in rat for a structurally diverse set of neutral and moderate-to-strong basic compounds (n ؍ 50). Hepatic blood clearance (CL h ) was projected using microsomal data and shown to be well predicted, irrespective of the type of hepatic extraction model (80% within 2-fold). Best predictions of CL h were obtained disregarding both plasma and microsomal protein binding, whereas strong bias was seen using either blood binding only or both plasma and microsomal protein binding. Two mechanistic tissue composition-based equations were evaluated for predicting volume of distribution (V dss ) and tissue-to-plasma partitioning (P tp ). A first approach, which accounted for ionic interactions with acidic phospholipids, resulted in accurate predictions of V dss (80% within 2-fold). In contrast, a second approach, which disregarded ionic interactions, was a poor predictor of V dss (60% within 2-fold). The first approach also yielded accurate predictions of P tp in muscle, heart, and kidney (80% within 3-fold), whereas in lung, liver, and brain, predictions ranged from 47% to 62% within 3-fold. Using the second approach, P tp prediction accuracy in muscle, heart, and kidney was on average 70% within 3-fold, and ranged from 24% to 54% in all other tissues. Combining all methods for predicting V dss and CL h resulted in accurate predictions of the in vivo half-life (70% within 2-fold). Oral bioavailability was well predicted using CL h data and Gastroplus Software (80% within 2-fold). These results illustrate that physiologically based prediction tools can provide accurate predictions of rat pharmacokinetics.Obtaining rapid information regarding the pharmacokinetics (PK) of new drug candidates can be a bottleneck in early drug discovery. Considerable resources are required to assess the PK properties of potential drug candidates in vivo in animals. To optimize the use of such in vivo testing, there has been a growing interest in predicting the PK behavior of drug candidates as early as possible (Norris et al., 2000;van de Waterbeemd and Gifford, 2003). If sufficiently reliable, such simulations could also help to select the best candidates for development and to reject those with a low probability of success.The characterization of a drug's PK requires elucidation of each of the coincident processes of absorption, distribution, metabolism, and elimination (ADME). A large number of methodologies have been established for this purpose, including empirical and physiologically based methods (Boxenbaum and Ronfeld, 1983;Theil et al., 2003). Until recently, PK prediction has been predominantly descriptive, using empirical methods. Although in some cases these methods give good predictions, their physiological basis is low and inaccurate results can be obtained, in particular when there are large interspecies differences in metabolic clearance (Lave et al., 1995;Zuegge et al., ...