Host-guest kinetic interactions between HP-β-cyclodextrin and drugs for prediction of bitter taste masking

[Display omitted] •The relationship between kinetic parameter (Ka and Kd) of drug-cyclodextrin inclusion and taste masking is revealed.•A 3D model is successfully established to predict taste masking effect of drug-cyclodextrin inclusion.•A novel and high-throughput method based on SPRi is developed to investigate taste masking.•It offers a rapid way to surrogate conventional methods for taste evaluation of new drug candidates at early stage. Cyclodextrins (CD) are widely used bitter taste masking agents, for which the binding equilibrium constant (K) for the drug-CD complex is a conventional parameter for quantitating the taste masking effects. However, some exceptions have been reported to the expected relationship between K and bitterness reduction and the relationship between kinetic parameters of a drug-CD interaction, including association rate constant (Ka) and disassociation rate constant (Kd), and taste masking remains unexplored. In this study, based upon a database of kinetic parameters of drugs-HP-β-CD generated by Surface Plasmon Resonance Imaging for 485 drugs, the host-guest kinetic interactions between drugs and HP-β-CD for prediction of taste masking effects have been investigated. The taste masking effects of HP-β-CD for 13 bitter drugs were quantitatively determined using an electronic gustatory system (α-Astree e-Tongue). Statistical software was used to establish a model based on Euclidean distance measurements, Ka and Kd of the bitter drugs/HP-β-CD-complexes (R2=0.96 and P