Isolation of circulating metabolites in drug discovery using high-performance liquid chromatography, and their identification by liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy

One of the major components of modern drug discovery is the structural determination and the assessment of biological activity of plasma metabolites. LC-MS/MS has played a prominent role in the identification of metabolites; however, fragmentation patterns alone may not be sufficient for identification. Consequently, it may be necessary to isolate the metabolites for NMR or LC-NMR analysis. This report describes the isolation and identification of the major plasma metabolites of two lead compounds (SCH X and SCH Y). The major metabolite of SCH X in monkey plasma constituted 65% of total compound-derived materials. Incubation of rat liver microsomes with SCH X gave the mono-hydroxylated metabolite found in monkey plasma; however, the yield was low. Incubations with microsomes from rats pre-treated with various cytochrome P450 inducers showed that the highest yield was obtained from pregnenolone 16alpha-carbonitrile (PCN)-induced animals. For SCH Y, two metabolites were found in bile and plasma of both rats and monkeys. Various in vitro systems did not produce amounts sufficient for isolation. Therefore, the metabolites of SCH X and SCH Y were isolated from PCN-induced rat liver microsomal incubation and rat bile, respectively. The chemical structures of the metabolites were unambiguously determined using LC-NMR analyses.