Study of the metabolism of new drugs of abuse

Abstract

Human hepatocytes possess a wider range of phase I and II drug-metabolizing enzyme activities than other liver tissue- derived products, such as human liver microsomes. Thus, hepatocytes may be useful for predicting the in vivo metabolic fate of new drugs of abuse in humans. Recently, new types of human hepatocytes have been made commercially available for use in drug metabolism studies, such as a liver tumor-derived cell line (HepaRG), and a human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived hepatocyte (h-iPS-HEP). In our laboratory, HepaRG has been used to elucidate the metabolic pathways of XLR-11, a synthetic cannabinoid, and its thermal degradant. In addition, the potential of h-iPS-HEP to metabolize drugs was assessed using fentanyl as a model drug, and indeed, h-iPS-HEP exhibited a pattern for fentanyl metabolite formation similar to that observed in vivo. In addition, the phase I and II drug-metabolizing enzyme activities of HepaRG, h-iPS-HEP, liver-humanized mouse-derived hepatocytes (PXB-cellsTM), and human primary hepatocytes were evaluated and compared. HepaRG showed high phase I and II drug metabolism activities; however, the CYP2D6 activity in these cells was quite low, and therefore h-iPS-HEP lacked O-methylation and conjugation activities. PXB-cells provided optimal results, i.e., these cells are extremely easy to use, and they possess higher phase I and II drug-metabolizing enzyme activities than the other cells tested. Although PXB-cells are contaminated with mouse-derived cells up to a concentration of several percent, this cell system appears to be promising for the prediction of in vivo human metabolism of new drugs of abuse.