Dried blood spot sampling: coupling bioanalytical feasibility, blood-plasma partitioning and transferability to in vivo preclinical studies

Background: The adoption of dried blood spot (DBS) sampling and analysis to support drug discovery and development requires the understanding of its bioanalytical feasibility as well as the distribution of the analyte in blood. Results: Demonstrated the feasibility of adopting DBS for four test analytes representing diverse physicochemical as well as pharmacokinetic parameters. The key findings include the use of a single extraction procedure across all four analytes, assay range of 1 to 5000 ng/ml, stability in whole blood as well as on-card, and the non-impact of blood volume. In vivo data were used to calculate the blood-to-plasma ratio (using both AUC and average of individual time points), which was then used to predict plasma concentration from DBS data. The predicted data showed an excellent correlation with actual plasma data. Conclusion: Transition from plasma to DBS can be supported for preclinical studies by conducting a few well-defined bioanalytical experiments followed by an in vivo bridging study. Blood: plasma ratio derived from the bridging study can be used to predict plasma concentrations from DBS data.