Noopept, or N-phenylacetyl-L-prolylglycine ethyl ester, is a new dipeptide drug possessing pronounced nootropic properties [1,2]. Previously, the drug was characterized with respect to pharmacokinetics upon intravenous and peroral administration in rats [3,4]. The results showed that noopept is rapidly metabolized upon intravenous injection, as manifested by a pronounced effect of the "first passage" through liver upon peroral administration.The aim of this study was to assess the absolute and relative bioaccessibility of noopept administered in various forms in rats and rabbits.
EXPERIMENTAL PARTThe experiments were performed on white mongrel male rats weighing 180 -250 g and on chinchilla rabbits weighing 3.0 -3.8 kg. The schedule of the experimental study of the pharmacokinetics upon intravenous (5 mg/kg) and peroral (50 mg/kg) administration of the parent drug in rats was described elsewhere [3,4]. In this study, the pharmacokinetics and bioaccessibility of noopept in a ready-to-use drug form was evaluated for the drug in the form of a tabletization mixture administered intragastrically in a dose of 70 mg/kg. The animals were decapitated with discrete time intervals after treatment, and the blood for analyses was collected in heparin-treated tubes.The study of the noopept pharmacokinetics in rabbits was carried out as follows. The control samples of blood were taken from the edge auricular veins of all animals di-vided into three groups. Then, rabbits in the first group were treated by the parent substance of noopept (10 mg/kg) injected into edge auricular veins; animals in the second group received the drug in a dose of 50 mg/kg introduced in a volume of 8 ml via a gastric tube; and animals in the third group received uncrushed tablets with the same volume of water. The blood samples were taken from the edge auricular 5, 10, 20, 30, 45, 60 and 90 min after drug administration. The samples were collected in tubes containing 250 units of heparin.Subsequent processing of the blood samples, chromatographic analysis, and calculation of the pharmacokinetic parameters were performed as described in [3,4]. The drug pharmacokinetics was characterized by a set of parameters calculated within the framework of a model-independent method, including the maximum concentration (C max ), the time to maximum concentration (T max ), the area under the pharmacokinetic (concentration versus time) curve (AUC 0 ® ¥ ), the mean absorption time (MAT ) and mean retention time (MRT ) of the drug in the organism, the half-elimination time (T 1/2 ), and the elimination rate constant (K el ). In addition, we calculated the ratio of the maximum concentration to the area under the pharmacokinetic curve (C max /AUC 0 ® ¥ ), which characterizes the rate of drug absorption, and determined the absolute bioaccessibility (defined as AUC p.o. /AUC i.v. for the parent substance) and the relative bioaccessibility (defined as AUC tabl /AUC par ) of the drug studied. The experimental data were statistically processed on a computer using an SPSS 9.0.0...