Application of automated serial blood sampling and dried blood spot technique with liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry for pharmacokinetic studies in mice

The goal of this work was to obtain full pharmacokinetic profiles from individual mice with the use of an automated blood sampling system and dried blood spot (DBS) technique. AMG 517, a potent and selective vanilloid receptor (VR1) antagonist, was dosed to mice (n = 3) intravenously and blood samples were collected using the automated blood sampling system with the “no blood waste” method. The collected blood samples were a mixture of 25 μL blood and 50 μL of heparinized saline solution. Two 15 μL aliquots were manually spotted onto a DBS card and dried at room temperature for at least 2 h before being stored in zip bags with desiccant. The remaining samples (45 μL) were stored at −70 °C until analysis. Both the DBS and the whole blood samples (diluted with saline (1:2, v/v)) were extracted and analyzed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. The overall extraction recovery of the analyte from the dried blood spots was determined to be about 90%. The pharmacokinetic parameters calculated using the whole blood or the DBS concentration data were comparable, and were obtained from only 3 mice, whereas conventional sampling and analysis would have required up to 27 mice to achieve the same result. The analyte was shown to be stable in the diluted whole blood (blood:saline 1:2) at room temperature for at least 4 h and in the DBS for at least 34 days when stored at room temperature. These results indicated that the automated blood sampling system and DBS collection are promising techniques to obtain full pharmacokinetic profiles from individual mice and reduce the use of animals.