Role of Hepatic Drug Transporters in Drug Development

Hepatic drug transporters can play an important role in pharmacokinetics and the disposition of therapeutic drugs and endogenous substances. Altered function of hepatic drug transporters due to drug-drug interactions (DDIs), genetic polymorphisms, and disease states can often result in a change in systemic and/or tissue exposure and subsequent pharmacological/toxicological effects of their substrates. Regulatory agencies including the US Food and Drug Administration, European Medicines Agency, and Japan Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency have issued guidance for industry on drug interaction studies, which contain comprehensive recommendations on in vitro and in vivo study tools and cutoff values to evaluate the DDI potential of new molecular entities mediated by hepatic drug transporters. In this report we summarize the latest regulatory and scientific progress of hepatic drug transporters in clinical DDIs, pharmacogenetics, drug-induced liver injury (DILI), as well as methods for predicting transporter-mediated pharmacokinetics and DDIs.