Current Drug Metabolism - Volume 3, Issue 6, 2002

Cytochrome P450s comprise a superfamily of heme-thiolate proteins named for the spectral absorbance peak of their carbon-monoxide-bound species at 450 nm. Having been found in every class of organism, including Archaea, the P450 superfamily is believed to have originated from an ancestral gene that existed over 3 billion years ago. Repeated gene duplications have subsequently given rise to one of the largest of m Read More

Drugs and other chemicals that contain one or more heterocyclic nitrogen atoms are most widely known for their ability to both inhibit and induce cytochrome P450s. Their ability to affect a wide range of Phase II drug metabolizing enzyme activities has received much less attention and exposure. For some N-heterocycles, induction of Phase II metabolism occurs in the absence of induction effects on cytochrome P450, a Read More

In the last 16 years, more than a dozen gene-directed enzyme prodrug therapies for cancer treatment have been evaluated in preclinical studies. However, only few of them have evolved to the stage of clinical trial. This review assesses current knowledge in the area of cancer gene therapy, emphasizing cytochrome P450 (CYP)-based prodrug activation systems. This approach is intuitively highly suitable for the treatment of c Read More

Glucuronidation is responsible for the clearance of a diverse range of drug and chemicals whose topology confers properties that complicate in vitro-in vivo clearance correlations as compared to those possible for oxidative metabolism. The active site of the UGTs faces the inside of the luminal space of the endoplasmic reticulum, thus presenting diffusional barriers for substrates, the cosubstrate, UDPGA, and resultant gl Read More

The amount of drug achieved and maintained in the brain after systemic administration is determined by the agent's permeability at blood-brain barrier (BBB), potential involvement of transport systems, and the distribution, metabolism and elimination properties. Passive diffusion permeability may be predicted by an in silico method based on a molecule's structure property. In vitro cell culture is another useful tool Read More