Our ultimate goal is to develop mechanism-based pharmacokinetic (PK)-pharmacodynamic (PD) models to characterize and to predict
CNS drug responses in both physiologic and pathologic conditions. To this end, it is essential to have information on the
biophase pharmacokinetics, because these may significantly differ from plasma pharmacokinetics. it is anticipated that biophase
kinetics of CNS drugs are strongly influenced by transport across the blood-brain barrier (BBB). The special role of microdialysis
in PK/PD modeling of CNS drugs lies in the fact that it enables the determination of free-drug concentrations as a function
of time in plasma and in extracellular fluid of the brain, thereby providing important data to determine BBB transport characteristics
of drugs. Also, the concentrations of (potential) extracellular biomarkers of drug effects or disease can be monitored with
this technique. Here we describe our studies including microdialysis on the following: (1) the evaluation of the free drug
hypothesis;(2) the role of BBB transport on the central effects of opioids; (3) changes in BBB transport and biophase equilibration
of anti-epileptic drugs; and (4) the relation among neurodegeneration, BBB transport, and drug effects in Parkinson’s disease
progression.
Keywords blood-brain barrier - pharmacokinetics - pharmacodynamics - biophase - microdialysis
Published: October 7, 2005