Transport inhibition of digoxin using several common P-gp expressing cell lines is not necessarily reporting only on inhibitor binding to P-gp.

We have reported that the P-gp substrate digoxin required basolateral and apical uptake transport in excess of that allowed by digoxin passive permeability (as measured in the presence of GF120918) to achieve the observed efflux kinetics across MDCK-MDR1-NKI (The Netherlands Cancer Institute) confluent cell monolayers. That is, GF120918 inhibitable uptake transport was kinetically required. Therefore, IC50 measurements using digoxin as a probe substrate in this cell line could be due to inhibition of P-gp, of digoxin uptake transport, or both.

If the KI is defined by the free energy of binding to P-glycoprotein, which kinetic parameters define the IC50 for the Madin-Darby canine kidney II cell line overexpressing human multidrug resistance 1 confluent cell monolayer?

From previous fits of drug transport kinetics across confluent Madin-Darby canine kidney II cell line overexpressing human multidrug resistance 1 cell monolayers, we found that a drug's binding constant to P-glycoprotein (P-gp) was significantly smaller than its IC(50) when that drug was used as an inhibitor against another P-gp substrate. We tested several IC(50) candidate functions, including the standard function, the Kalvass-Pollack function, and the efflux ratio, to determine whether any of them yielded an IC(50) = K(I), as would be expected for water-soluble enzymes. For the confluent cell monolayer, the IC(50)/K(I) ratio is greater than 1 for all candidate functions tested.