A cell culture system to model pharmacokinetics using adjustable-volume perfused mixing chambers.

The pharmacokinetic (PK) profile of a drug is an essential factor in determining its efficacy, yet it is often neglected during in vitro cell culture experiments. Here, we present a system in which standard well plate cultures may be "plugged in" and perfused with PK drug profiles. Drug boluses or infusions of a tailored kinetic profile are passed through a mixing chamber that simulates the PK volume of distribution specific to the desired drug. A user-specified PK drug profile generated by the mixing chamber passes through the incubated well plate culture, exposing cells to in vivo-like PK drug dynamics. The effluent stream from the culture may then optionally be fractionated and collected by a fraction collector. This low-cost system requires no custom parts and perfuses up to six cultures in parallel. Studies were conducted to demonstrate a range of PK profiles the system can produce using a tracer dye, describes how to find the correct mixing chamber volume to mimic drugs of interest, and explored differing PK exposure effects using a model of lymphoma treatment with chemotherapy.