Abstract:
In the research and development of new drugs, it is very important to investigate the
in vitro metabolism of candidate drugs. Traditional models such as liver microsomes have many limitations, while the
in vitro model of recombinant human drug metabolizing enzymes is considered as an important and useful approach because of its convenient access, stable activity and low cost. In this study, six major human UDP-glucuronosyltransferases (UGTs) genes (
UGT1A1,
1A3,
1A4,
1A6,
1A9 and
2B7) were cloned from human liver cDNA and heterologously expressed in
Saccharomyces cerevisiae and baculovirus-infected insect cell.
UGT1A1,
1A3,
1A6 and
1A9 were successfully expressed in yeast and showed glucuronidation activity against a variety of different structural types of substrates, but their activities were low. All six UGTs were successfully expressed and exhibited significantly improved glucuronidation activity when
Trichopolusia ni cells BTI-TN5B1-4 (High Five) were used as the host. The recombinant human UGTs expressed in insect cells can catalyze the glucuronidation of their specific substrates, and the glucuronidation products were synthesized at milligram-scale with yields of 13%-66% for the first time, of which the structures were identified
via MS,
1H NMR, and
13C NMR spectroscopic analysis. Above all, the recombinant human UGTs yeast and insect cell expression systems constructed in this study can be used for
in vitro metabolism evaluation in the early stage of new drugs research and development, and also provide a new tool for the synthesis of glucuronide metabolites.