Amiodarone biokinetics, the formation of its major metabolite and neurotoxicity after acute and repeated exposure of brain cell cultures

The difficulty in mimicking nervous system complexity and cell-cell interactions as well as the lack of kinetics information has limited the use of in vitro neurotoxicity data. Here, we assessed the biokinetic profile as well as the neurotoxicity of Amiodarone after acute and repeated exposure in two advanced rodent brain cell culture models, consisting of both neurons and glial cells organized in 2 or 3 dimensions to mimic the brain histiotypic structure and function. A strategy was applied to evidence the abiotic processes possibly affecting Amiodarone in vitro bioavailability, showing its ability to adsorb to the plastic devices. At clinically relevant Amiodarone concentrations, known to induce neurotoxicity in some patients during therapeutic treatment, a complete uptake was observed in both models in 24h, after single exposure. After repeated treatments, bioaccumulation was observed, especially in the 3D cell model, together with a greater alteration of neurotoxicity markers. After 14 days, Amiodarone major oxidative metabolite (mono-Ndesethylamiodarone) was detected at limited levels, indicating the presence of active drug metabolism enzymes (i.e. cytochrome P450) in both models. The assessment of biokinetics provides useful information on the relevance of in vitro toxicity data and should be considered in the design of an Integrated Testing Strategy aimed to identify specific neurotoxic alerts, and to improve the neurotoxicity assay predictivity for human acute and repeated exposure

Development of micro-electrode array based tests for neurotoxicity: assessment of interlaboratory reproducibility with neuroactive chemicals

Neuronal assemblies within the nervous system produce electrical activity that can be recorded in terms of action potential patterns. Such patterns provide a sensitive endpoint to detect effects of a variety of chemical and physical perturbations. They are a function of synaptic changes and do not necessarily involve structural alterations. In vitro neuronal networks (NNs) grown on Micro-Electrode Arrays (MEAs) respond to neuroactive substances as well as the in vivo brain. As such, they constitute a valuable tool for investigating changes in the electrophysiological activity of the neurons in response to chemical exposures. However, the reproducibility of NN responses to chemical exposure has not been systematically documented. To this purpose six independent laboratories (in Europe and in USA) evaluated the response to the same pharmacological compounds (Fluoxetine, Muscimol, and Verapamil) in primary neuronal cultures. Common standardization principles and acceptance criteria for the quality of the cultures have been established to compare the obtained results. These studies involved more than 100 experiments before the final conclusions have been drawn that MEA technology has a potential for standard in vitro neurotoxicity/neuropharmacology evaluation. The obtained results show good intra- and inter-laboratory reproducibility of the responses. The consistent inhibitory effects of the compounds were observed in all the laboratories with the 50% Inhibiting Concentrations (IC50s) ranging from: (mean ± S.E.M., in µM) 1.53±0.17 to 5.4±0.7 (n=35) for Fluoxetine, 0.16±0.03 to 0.38±0.16 µM (n=35) for Muscimol, and 2.68±0.32 to 5.23±1.7 (n=32) for Verapamil. The outcome of this study indicates that the MEA approach is a robust tool leading to reproducible results. The future direction will be to extend the set of testing compounds and to propose the MEA approach as a standard screen for identification and prioritization of chemicals with neurotoxicity potential.JRC.I.6-Systems toxicolog

Evaluation of drug-induced neurotoxicity based on metabolomics, proteomics and electrical activity measurements in the complementary CNS in vitro models

The present study was performed in an attempt to develop an in vitro integrated testing strategy to evaluate neurotoxicity of drugs during development phase. A number of endpoints was analyzed using two complementary brain cell culture models, and an in vitro blood-brain barrier model after acute, sub-chronic, and repeated-dose treatments with a series of selected drugs. The developed in vitro BBB model allowed to detect toxic effects on the BBB and to evaluate drug transport through the BBB for prediction free brain concentrations of studied drugs. The electrical activity of cortical neuronal networks recorded with a micro-electrode array was found to be a good tool to predict the neuroactivity and neurotoxicity of drugs and it is suggested as a first-step high content screening test. The histotypic 3D re-aggregating brain cell cultures, containing all brain cell types, were found well suitable for OMICs analyzes. The obtained data suggest that an in vitro integrated testing strategy (ITS), including toxicity to and transport through BBB, as well as metabolomics, proteomics and neuronal electrical activity, measured in stable rodent brain cell culture systems (in the future human stem cell-derived neuronal models), may considerably improve current drug-induced neurotoxicity evaluation. Robustness of this ITS has to be further evaluated with a larger number of studied drugs.JRC.I.5-Systems Toxicolog