Research article

Minipig cytochrome P450 3A, 2A and 2C enzymes have similar properties to human analogs

Pavel Soucek¹ , Roman Zuber^2,3 , Eva Anzenbacherová³ , Pavel Anzenbacher² and F Peter Guengerich⁴

¹Group of Biotransformations, Center for Occupational Diseases, National Institute of Public Health, Srobarova 48, Praha 10, 100 42, Czech Republic

²Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, Palacký University, Hnevotinska 3, 775 15 Olomouc, Czech Republic

³Department of Medical Chemistry and Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, Palacký University, Hnevotinska 3, 775 15 Olomouc, Czech Republic

⁴Department of Biochemistry and Center in Molecular Toxicology, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, 37232-0146, USA

author email corresponding author email

BMC Pharmacology 2001, 1:11doi:10.1186/1471-2210-1-11

Published:	5 December 2001

Abstract

Background

The search for an optimal experimental model in pharmacology is recently focused on (mini)pigs as they seem not only to be an alternative source of cells and tissues for xenotherapy but also an alternative species for studies on drug metabolism in man due to similarities between (mini) pig and human drug metabolizing systems. The purpose of this work is to characterize minipig liver microsomal cytochromes P450 (CYPs) by comparing their N-terminal sequences with corresponding human orthologs.

Results

The microsomal CYPs exhibit similar activities to their human orthologous enzymes (CYP3A4, nifedipine oxidation; 2A6, coumarin 7-hydroxylation; 2D6, bufuralol 1'-hydroxylation; 2E1, p-nitrophenol hydroxylation; and 2C9, tolbutamide hydroxylation). Specific minipig CYP (2A, 2C and 3A) enzymes were partially purified and proteins identified by immunostaining (using antibodies against the respective human CYPs) were used for N-terminal amino acid sequencing. From comparisons, it can be concluded that the sequence of the first 20 amino acids at the N-terminus of minipig CYP2A is highly similar to human CYP2A6 (70% identity). The N-terminal sequence of CYP2C shared about 50% similarity with human 2C9. The results on the minipig liver microsomal CYP3A yielded identical data with those obtained for amino acid sequences of the pig CYP3A29 showing 60% identity with human CYP3A4.

Conclusions

Thus, our results further support the view that minipigs may serve as model animals in pharmacological/toxicological studies with substrates of human CYP enzymes, namely, of the CYP3A and CYP2A forms.