The Role of Paracellular Transport in the Intestinal Absorption and Biopharmaceutical Characterization of Minoxidil
June 2022
in “
Pharmaceutics
”
TLDR Minoxidil's absorption is too variable for it to be a reliable reference drug.
The study investigates the intestinal absorption and biopharmaceutical characterization of minoxidil, focusing on paracellular transport using in-silico, in-vitro, and in-vivo methods. It finds that minoxidil's permeability is pH-independent and significantly influenced by tight junction modifiers, with quercetin decreasing and sodium decanoate increasing permeability. Approximately 15% of minoxidil is absorbed paracellularly, primarily in the proximal intestine. Due to the variability introduced by paracellular transport, minoxidil is unsuitable as a Biopharmaceutics Classification System (BCS) reference drug for low/high permeability classification.
