Gender difference in the pharmacokinetics and metabolism of VX‐548 in rats

VX‐548 is a sodium channel blocker, which acts as an analgesic. This study aims to investigate the gender differences in the pharmacokinetics and metabolism of VX‐548 in rats. After intravenous administration, the area under the curve (AUC0−t) of VX‐548 was much higher in female rats (1505.8 ± 47.3 ng·h/mL) than in male rats (253.8 ± 6.3 ng·h/mL), and the clearance in female rats (12.5 ± 0.8 mL/min/kg) was much lower than in male rats (65.1 ± 1.7 mL/min/kg). After oral administration, the AUC0−t in female rats was about 50‐fold higher than that in male rats. The oral bioavailability in male rats was 11% while it was 96% in female rats. An in vitro metabolism study revealed that the metabolism of VX‐548 in female rat liver microsomes was much slower than in male rats. Further metabolite identification suggested that the significant gender difference in pharmacokinetics was attributed to demethylation. The female rat liver microsomes showed a limited ability to convert VX‐548 into desmethyl VX‐548. Phenotyping experiments indicated that the formation of desmethyl VX‐548 was mainly catalyzed by CYP3A2 and CYP2C11 using rat recombinant CYPs. Overall, we revealed that the pharmacokinetics and metabolism of VX‐548 in male and female rats showed significant gender differences. VX‐548 is a Nav 1.8 inhibitor that is undergoing clinical development for the treatment of acute pain. The current work demonstrated that VX‐548 showed a gender difference in the pharmacokinetics in rats, which was ascribed to gender‐biased hepatic metabolism.