Determination of the Number of Tissue Groups of Kinetically Distinct Transit Time in Whole-Body Physiologically Based Pharmacokinetic (PBPK) Models II: Practical Application of Tissue Lumping Theories for Pharmacokinetics of Various Compounds.

In our companion paper, we described the theoretical basis for tissue lumping in whole-body physiologically based pharmacokinetic (WB-PBPK) models and found that K, a coefficient for determining the number of tissue groups of distinct transit time in WB-PBPK models, was related to the fractional change in the terminal slope (FCT) when tissues were progressively lumped from the longest transit time to shorter ones. This study was conducted to identify the practical threshold of K by applying the lumping theory to plasma/blood concentration-time relationships of 113 model compounds collected from the literature. We found that drugs having K < 0.3 were associated with FCT < 0.1 even when all peripheral tissues were lumped, resulting in comparable plasma concentration-time profiles between one-tissue minimal PBPK (mPBPK) and WB-PBPK models. For drugs with K ≥ 1, WB-PBPK profiles appeared similar with two-tissue mPBPK models by applying the rule of FCT < 0.1 for lumping slowly equilibrating tissues. The two-tissue mPBPK model also appeared appropriate in terms of concentration-time profiles for drugs with 0.3 ≤ K < 1, although, some compounds (15.9% of the total cases), but not all, in this range showed a slight (maximum of 18.9% of the total AUC) deviation from WB-PBPK models, indicating that the two-tissue model, with caution, could still be used for those cases. Comparison of kinetic parameters between traditional (model-fitting) and current (theoretical calculation) mPBPK analyses revealed their significant correlations. Collectively, these observations suggest that the number of tissue groups could be determined based on the K/FCT criteria, and plasma concentration-time profiles from WB-PBPK could be calculated using equations significantly less complex.