In vitro microdialysis sampling of docetaxel.

Microdialysis is a technique that allows sampling compounds from the extracellular fluid in different tissues, such as muscle, lung, and brain. However, the feasibility of using this technique with lipopohilic and high molecular weight compounds has been questioned, since these compounds are less likely to diffuse through the dialysis membrane. Therefore, it was the objective of this study to investigate the feasibility of doing microdialysis of docetaxel by determining its recovery by the microdialysis probe. Three different methods were investigated: extraction efficiency, retrodialysis, and no-net-flux. For the first two methods, three different concentrations were tested: 2.5, 5, and 9 mg/l. The recovery obtained for each concentration was 49.3 +/- 6.7 (n = 4), 44.6 +/- 5.4 (n = 3), and 34.7 +/- 2.1 (n = 4) by extraction efficiency, and 53.4 +/- 7.9 (n = 3), 61.4 +/- 7.6 (n = 3), and 64.2 +/- 1.9 (n = 3) by retrodialysis, respectively. The average recovery obtained by no-net-flux was 68.7 +/- 9.6 (n = 5). Although it has been reported that microdialysis cannot be applied to lipophilic compounds, the results here show the opposite. The high recoveries obtained for docetaxel in all methods applied show that the compound can diffuse through the probe membrane. Overall, docetaxel seems to be very suitable for microdialysis despite its lipophilicity and high molecular weight.