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Concentration-dependent effects from the permeation enhancers capric acid and SNAC on peptide permeability
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Medicine and Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Department of Pharmacy. (Molecular and Computational Pharmaceutics/Molekylärfarmaci)ORCID iD: 0000-0002-5563-2908
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Medicine and Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Department of Pharmacy. (Molecular and Computational Pharmaceutics/Molekylärfarmaci)ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9556-2695
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Medicine and Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Department of Pharmacy. (Molecular and Computational Pharmaceutics/Molekylärfarmaci)ORCID iD: 0000-0002-8418-4956
(English)Manuscript (preprint) (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Medium-chain fatty acid-based permeation enhancers (PEs) have gained significant attention due to their potential application in various industries, including within the pharmaceutics sector as absorption enhancers for, e.g., peptide drugs. In this study, we performed computational experiments to investigate the impact of two different PEs, capric acid and Salcaprozate sodium (SNAC), at three different concentrations (0%, 30%, 50%), on the structural properties of a bilayer consisting of 70% 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (POPC) and 30% cholesterol. We employed coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations first to explore the interactions of the PEs with lipid bilayers at the molecular level and then to examine the consequences of these interactions for the permeability of three different peptides (octreotide, desmopressin, and triptorelin). We employed umbrella sampling simulations to obtain the permeability rates of the PEs at several concentrations and of the peptides in the absence and presence of the two PEs, also at different concentrations. We observed that the impact on the membrane structural properties changed with increasing PE concentration. We also found that the effective permeability values increased with increasing PE concentration. However, the permeability values were significantly higher (6-7 orders of magnitude) for capric acid than for SNAC, which we argue is mainly because capric acid has more pronounced effects on the structural properties of the membrane. Peptide permeability also increased with increasing PE concentration. The Peff values followed the trend: octreotide > triptorelin > desmopressin across all systems. For each peptide, the lowest Peff values were observed in the no-PE systems, while the highest values were observed in the systems with 50% capric acid. Capric acid exhibited an increasing trend in Peff values with higher concentrations within the membrane. In contrast, the peptide Peff values in the SNAC systems were similar between the 30% and 50% concentrations, aligning with the trends observed in free energy profiles and the membrane structural characteristics. Thus, for SNAC, there seems to be a concentration where the permeability-enhancing effect plateaus. With these results, we hope to pave the way for more knowledge-based design of pharmaceutical dosage forms that involve PEs for increasing transcellular peptide permeability, considering the differences in compatibility between PEs and peptides, and the apparent synergistic effect of combining PEs.

Keywords [en]
Salcaprozate sodium (SNAC), Capric acid (C10), Permeation enhancers, Peptide permeability, Octreotide, Desmopressin, Triptorelin, Molecular dynamics simulations, inhomogenous-solubility diffusion model (ISDM), Umbrella sampling (US) simulations
National Category
Pharmaceutical Sciences
Research subject
Pharmaceutical Science
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-552024OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-552024DiVA, id: diva2:1942714
Funder
Vinnova, 2019-00048Available from: 2025-03-06 Created: 2025-03-06 Last updated: 2025-03-06
In thesis
1. Mechanistic Studies of Membrane Permeation of Peptides
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Mechanistic Studies of Membrane Permeation of Peptides
2025 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Oral administration of drugs is often preferred over injections due to its convenience, and therapeutic peptides offer significant advantages, including high activity, specificity, and low toxicity. However, oral delivery of peptide drugs presents significant challenges such as low permeability across the gastrointestinal epithelium. A promising strategy to improve bioavailability is co-formulating peptides with permeation enhancers (PEs) to facilitate transcellular transport. In this thesis, the interactions between peptides, PEs, and lipid membranes have been investigated using both the atomistic all-atom (AA) and coarse-grained (CG) molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. We investigated the interactions between PE and membrane using AA-MD. The PEs studied were different medium-chain fatty acids, such as laurate, caprate (C10), and caprylate, and the caprylate derivative SNAC all with a negative charge and neutral caprate and neutral sucrose monolaurate. Our results indicated that the PEs, once incorporated into the membrane, induce membrane leakiness in a concentration-dependent manner. The results also indicated that a PE concentration of at least 70−100 mM is needed to strongly affect transcellular permeability. We then studied the colloidal structures of different peptide therapeutics in the presence and absence of two different PEs, C10 and SNAC and bile salt, taurocholate. The simulations provided insights into molecular-level interactions, highlighting the specific contacts between peptide residues responsible for aggregation and the interactions between peptide residues and permeability enhancers/taurocholates that are crucial within the mixed colloids. Our simulations also showed that the PEs can promote the release of hydrophobic peptides while restrict the release of water-soluble peptides. Finally, we also performed umbrella sampling simulations to calculate the effective permeability coefficients (Peff) for three different peptides: octreotide, desmopressin, and triptorelin, using CG-MD in the presence of C10 and SNAC in the membrane. The results show that C10 can increase the Peff, of the peptides included in orders of magnitude in a concentration-dependent manner, compared to the peptide systems without C10 present. These molecular-level insights can guide the design of improved permeability enhancer-based dosage forms, allowing for selecting the best possible peptide-PE combination and precise control of peptide release profiles near the intended absorption site. 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2025. p. 92
Series
Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Pharmacy, ISSN 1651-6192 ; 373
Keywords
Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, Umbrella sampling (US) simulations, membrane permeation, drug delivery, oral peptide therapeutics, peptide permeability, permeation enhancers, salcaprozate sodium (SNAC), capric acid (C10)
National Category
Pharmaceutical Sciences
Research subject
Pharmaceutical Science
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-552025 (URN)978-91-513-2407-4 (ISBN)
Public defence
2025-04-24, A1:107a, BMC, Husargatan 3, 75123, Uppsala, 13:00 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2025-04-03 Created: 2025-03-06 Last updated: 2025-04-03

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Kneiszl, RositaHossain, Md ShakhawathLarsson, Per

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