ABSTRACT:Apixaban is an oral, direct, and highly selective factor Xa inhibitor in late-stage clinical development for the prevention and treatment of thromboembolic diseases. The metabolic drug-drug interaction potential of apixaban was evaluated in vitro. The compound did not show cytochrome P450 inhibition (IC 50 values >20 M) in incubations of human liver microsomes with the probe substrates of CYP1A2, 2B6, 2C8, 2C9, 2C19, 2D6, or 3A4/5. Apixaban did not show any effect at concentrations up to 20 M on enzyme activities or mRNA levels of selected P450 enzymes (CYP1A2, 2B6, and 3A4/5) that are sensitive to induction in incubations with primary human hepatocytes. Apixaban showed a slow metabolic turnover in incubations of human liver microsomes with formation of O-demethylation (M2) and hydroxylation products (M4 and M7) as prominent in vitro metabolites. Experiments with human cDNA-expressed P450 enzymes and P450 chemical inhibitors and correlation with P450 activities in individual human liver microsomes demonstrated that the oxidative metabolism of apixaban for formation of all metabolites was predominantly catalyzed by CYP3A4/5 with a minor contribution of CYP1A2 and CYP2J2 for formation of M2. The contribution of CYP2C8, 2C9, and 2C19 to metabolism of apixaban was less significant. In addition, a human absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion study showed that more than half of the dose was excreted as unchanged parent (f m CYP <0.5), thus significantly reducing the overall metabolic drug-drug interaction potential of apixaban. Together with a low clinical efficacious concentration and multiple clearance pathways, these results demonstrate that the metabolic drug-drug interaction potential between apixaban and coadministered drugs is low.Apixaban (Fig. 1), a novel and highly selective inhibitor of factor Xa (Luettgen et al., 2006;Pinto et al., 2007;Wong et al., 2008), is under development for the treatment and prevention of thromboembolic disorders, prevention of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation, and secondary prevention in patients with acute coronary syndromes (APPRAISE Steering Committee and Investigators, 2009). In addition to demonstrating high oral availability (Frost et al., 2007), clinical studies of apixiban have shown prevention of venous thromboembolic events in patients after knee replacement surgery (Lassen et al., 2007). Apixaban is efficacious and well tolerated in the treatment of patients with acute symptomatic deep vein thrombosis (Buller et al., 2008). After oral administration, apixaban was slowly metabolized and thus was mostly unchanged in the circulation although apixaban was metabolized by multiple pathways in animals and humans (Zhang et al., , 2010. The primary metabolic pathways of apixaban in humans included O-demethylation (M2) and hydroxylation (M4 and M7). M2 was further conjugated by sulfation to form a sulfate metabolite (M1) Wang et al., 2009). Other metabolites (M3, M5, and M6) previously identified as minor metabolites in animals and humans were als...