Mouse Pharmacokinetic Study of Ceftriaxone Using MitraTM Microsampling Devices

G. Gu, M. Fang, B. Virasingh, A. Groff, J. Freed, C. Clifton, Y. Li, D. Cheng Alliance Pharma Inc. Purpose Mice are one of the most commonly used animals in drug discovery pharmacokinetic (PK) studies. Guidelines are established for the frequency and amount of blood that can be collected from a single animal. Since the mouse’s body size is limited, parallel blood sampling is generally used whereby multiple mice are subjected to a single blood draw through cardiac puncture. One issue with parallel sampling, however, is that the number of animals required for the study can be large, depending on the number of time points and sample replicates required. Consequently, a large amount of test compound is also needed for dose administration. Repeated or serial sampling in a single animal, on the other hand, is often difficult, especially when cannulation is not an option. MitraTM microsampling devices (Neoteryx LLC) offer an alternative method for serial blood sampling in mouse PK studies. Using serial blood sampling methods rather than parallel blood sampling methods may greatly reduce the number of animals needed and lead to more reliable data by excluding individual differences. In this study, an experiment was designed to compare the serial blood sampling method using the MitraTM microsampling device with the parallel blood sampling method.