摘要:
Tamoxifen (TAM), a nonsteroidal antiestrogen, is the most widely used drug for chemotherapy of hormone-dependent breast cancer in women. In the present study, we found a new potential metabolic pathway of TAM via N-linked glucuronic acid conjugation for excretion in humans. TAM N+ -glucuronide was isolated from a reaction mixture consisting of TAM and human liver microsomes fortified with UDP-glucuronic acid (UDPGA) and identified with a synthetic specimen by high-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry. However, no TAM-glucuronidating activity was detected in microsomes from rat, mouse, monkey, dog, and guinea pig livers. A strong correlation (r(2) = 0.92) was observed between N-glucuronidating activities toward TAM and trifluoperazine, a probe substrate for human UDP-glucuronosyltransferase (UGT) 1A4, in human liver microsomes from eight donors (five females, three males). However, no correlation (r(2) = 0.02) was observed in the activities between 7-hydroxy-4-(trifluoromethyl)coumarin and TAM. Only UGT1A4 catalyzed the N-linked glucuronidation of TAM among recombinant UGTs (UGT1A1, UGT1A3, UGT1A4, UGT1A6, UGT1A9, UGT2B4, UGT2B7, UGT2B15, and UGT2B17) expressed in insect cells. Apparent K-m values for TAM N-glucuronidation by human liver microsomes and recombinant UGT1A4 were 35.8 and 3 2.4 muM, respectively. These results strongly suggested that UGT1A4 could play a role in metabolism and excretion of TAM without Phase I metabolism in human liver. TAM N+-glucuronide still had binding affinity similar to TAM itself for human estrogen receptors, ERalpha and ERbeta, suggesting that TAM N+-glucuronide might contribute to the biological activity of TAM in vivo. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.