Exploration of Optimal Dosing Regimens of Vancomycin in Patients Infected with Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus by Modeling and Simulation

What is known and objectiveVancomycin is the drug of choice for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection and shows time-dependent bacterial killing. The current study evaluated the pharmacokinetics (PK) and pharmacodynamics (PD) of vancomycin and explored its optimal dosing regimens by modeling and simulation.MethodsPharmacokinetics study was performed for 20 patients who were treated with vancomycin intravenously, 1000mg, every 12h, and blood for PK was randomly drawn within prespecified time windows. PD study was in vitro time-kill experiment for vancomycin against 20 MRSA strains independent of the PK study, where bacterial titre was measured at 0, 2, 4, 8, 24h after the beginning of vancomycin exposure at 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32x minimum inhibitory concentrations. PK and PD models were built from each data set, and simulation for MRSA titre changes over time in human body was performed for various vancomycin dosing regimens using NONMEM (R).ResultsVancomycin followed a two-compartment PK model, and creatinine clearance was the significant covariate affecting the clearance of vancomycin. PD model described the in vitro time-kill data well. The PK/PD model predicted clear dose-response relationships of vancomycin. The therapeutic dosing regimens of vancomycin, suggested by the simulation studies, showed good agreement with the current clinical practice guidance, which indicates that this PK/PD modeling and simulation approach could prove useful for identifying optimal dosing regimens of other antibiotics and expediting novel antibiotic development. Using PD model from in vitro time-kill study and human PK model from phase 1 study, we could predict whether the drug is going to be efficacious or obtain insight into the optimal dosing regimens for a novel antibiotic agent in the early phases of drug development process.