Accelerating Clinical Development of Idasanutlin through a Physiologically Based Pharmacokinetic Modeling Risk Assessment for CYP450 Isoenzyme-Related Drug–Drug Interactions

Idasanutlin is a potent inhibitor of the p53-MDM2 interaction that enables reactivation of the p53 pathway, which induces cell cycle arrest and/or apoptosis in tumor cells expressing functional p53. It was investigated for the treatment of solid tumors and several hematologic indications such as relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia, polycythemia vera, or non-Hodgkin lymphoma. For safety reasons, it cannot be given in healthy volunteers for drug–drug interaction (DDI) explorations. This triggered the need for in silico explorations on top of the one available CYP3A clinical DDI study with posaconazole in solid tumor patients. Idasanutlin's clearance is dependent on CYP3A4/2C8 forming its major circulating metabolite M4, with contributions from UGT1A3 and biliary excretion. Idasanutlin and M4 have low permeability, very low clearance, and extremely low unbound fraction in plasma (<0.001), which makes in vitro data showing inhibition on CYP3A4/2C8 enzymes challenging to translate to clinical relevance. Physiologically-based pharmacokinetic models of idasanutlin and M4 have been established to simulate perpetrator and victim DDI scenarios and to evaluate whether further DDI studies in oncology patients are necessary. Modeling indicated that idasanutlin and M4 would show no or weak clinical inhibition of selective CYP3A4/2C8 substrates. Co-administered strong CYP3A and CYP2C8 inhibitors might lead to weak or moderate idasanutlin exposure increases, and the strong inducer rifampicin might cause moderate exposure reduction. As the simulated idasanutlin systemic exposure changes would be within the range of observed intrinsic variability, the target population can take co-medications that are either CYP2C8/3A4 inhibitors or weak/moderate CYP2C8/3A4 inducers without dose adjustment.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT

Clinical trials for idasanutlin are restricted to cancer patients, which imposes practical, scientific, and ethical challenges on drug–drug interaction investigations. Furthermore, idasanutlin and its major circulating metabolite have very challenging profiles of absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion including high protein binding, low permeability and a combination of different elimination pathways each with extremely low clearance. Nonetheless, physiologically–based pharmacokinetic models could be established and applied for drug–drug interaction risk assessment and were especially useful to provide guidance on concomitant medications in patients.