ABSTRACT:Itraconazole ( During drug discovery and preclinical drug development, in vivo drug disposition and bioavailability studies are often conducted in rats, dogs, primates, and other species. It is increasingly recognized that the fraction of an orally administered drug that reaches the systemic circulation is controlled by both intestinal and hepatic metabolism. However, the contribution of the intestinal epithelia to the overall "first-pass effect" of drugs is difficult to quantify because the small intestine and liver are connected in series. Correct assessment of the separate roles of hepatic and intestinal drug metabolizing capacity in determining drug bioavailability and the extent of first-pass metabolism led us to develop (Uhing and Kimura, 1995a,b;Beno et al., 2001) and validate (Esguerra et al., 2000;Shaw et al., 2002;Uhing et al., 2004) a 5-catheter rat model for pharmacokinetic and drug-drug interaction studies in rats. Drug disposition studies can be conducted in awake, free-moving animals that have fully recovered from surgery and anesthesia and have regained their preoperative weight. Simultaneous sampling allows us to quantify the precise time course of changes in such pharmacokinetic parameters as clearance and hepatic extraction ratio.Itraconazole (ITZ), an orally active triazole antifungal agent, exhibits dose-dependent first-pass metabolism and nonlinear pharmacokinetics in both humans and rats (Hardin et al., 1988;Heykants et al., 1989;Yoo et al., 2000;Shin et al., 2004). Hydroxyitraconazole (OH-ITZ) is a major metabolite that is formed by CYP3A and has antifungal activity similar to ITZ (Heykants et al., 1989;Poirier and Cheymol, 1998). Both ITZ and OH-ITZ are potent inhibitors of CYP3A, and OH-ITZ often displays higher plasma concentrations after ITZ administration (Heykants et al., 1989;Poirier and Cheymol, 1998). Calculation of oral bioavailability compares the time-averaged AUC following oral administration to the time-averaged AUC after intravenous drug administration. Measurement of dose dependence and time-dependence in bioavailability and first-pass metabolism of itraconazole may be unreliable when based upon time-average values for AUC. Using our novel 5-catheter chronic rat model (Fig. 1), we administered ITZ intraduodenally and obtained blood samples simultaneously from aorta, portal vein, and hepatic vein. In particular, this recently validated model (Beno et al., 2001;Uhing et al., 2004) obviated the need to administer ITZ by both the intravenous and