Population pharmacokinetics of APOMINE: a meta-analysis in cancer patients and healthy males.

AIMS: 1) To characterize the population pharmacokinetics of apomine in healthy males and in male and female patients with solid tumours and 2) to understand more fully the influence of induction and between- and within-subject variability on exposure to drug using Monte Carlo simulation.
METHODS: Apomine was administered once- or twice-daily with or without food in single and multiple oral doses of 30-2100 mg to healthy males (n = 19) and patients with solid tumours (n = 19). The data were divided into model development and validation sets. Models were developed using standard population methods. These were the identification of an appropriate base model, calculation of the empirical Bayes estimates of the primary pharmacokinetic parameters, covariate screening, forward stepwise addition of covariates using the likelihood ratio test as a model selection criteria, and backwards elimination to obtain the final model. To study the influence of data from individual subjects, the model development dataset was subjected to the delete-1 jack-knife and the final model was fitted to each jack-knifed dataset. Principal components analysis of the jack-knifed matrix of model parameters identified two influential subjects who were removed from the dataset, and the final model contained data from the remaining subjects. Model validation was examined using goodness of fit statistics and relative error measures using independent datasets from cancer patients. The model provided a reasonable approximation to the pharmacokinetic measurements in the validation datasets. Computer simulations were undertaken to understand further the pharmacokinetics of apomine in otherwise healthy females, a population not yet studied.
RESULTS: Apomine pharmacokinetics were complex and consistent with a two-compartment model with a lag-time. Apparent oral clearance at baseline and apparent volume of distribution at steady-state were larger in healthy males than in cancer patients (41 ml h(-1) and 14.1 l vs 10 ml h(-1) and 8.9 l, respectively, for a 75 kg person). Clearance was time-variant showing a maximal increase with full induction of 320 ml h(-1), independent of patient type. The time to reach 50% maximal induction was about 2 days. The fraction of drug absorbed was relatively constant at doses less than 100-200 mg once daily but decreased at higher doses. Food also decreased relative bioavailability by 36%. Patient characteristics had no effect on apomine pharmacokinetics except for weight, which was proportional to the volume of the central compartment. Between-subject variability (68% for clearance, 30% for central volume, and 141% for peripheral volume) was moderate to large and independent of patient type. Inter-occasion variability was small (18% for both clearance and central volume). Residual variability was modelled with an additive and proportional error model. Cancer patients had slightly higher plasma concentrations than healthy males but this difference was probably not clinically significant. Steady-state was reached in about 3-4 days after once-daily drug administration. The half-life of apomine after three weeks of once-daily dosing was 41 h in cancer patients and 32 h in healthy males.
CONCLUSIONS: A population model for apomine has been developed has been developed that characterizes its pharmacokinetics in cancer patients and healthy subjects under a variety of conditions.