A Comparison of the In Vitro Inhibitory Effects of Thelephoric Acid and SKF-525A on Human Cytochrome P450 Activity

Thelephoric acid is an antioxidant produced by the hydrolysis of polyozellin, which is isolated from Polyozellus multiplex. In the present study, the inhibitory effects of polyozellin and thelephoric acid on 9 cytochrome P450 (GYP) family members (CYP1A2, CYP2A6, CYP2B6, CYP2C8, CYP2C9, CYP2C19, CYP2D6, CYP2E1, and CYP3A4) were examined in pooled human liver microsomes (HLMs) using a cocktail probe assay. Polyozellin exhibited weak inhibitory effects on the activities of all 9 CYPs examined, whereas thelephoric acid exhibited dose- and time-dependent inhibition of all 9 GYP isoforms (IC50 values, 3.2-33.7 mu M). Dixon plots of GYP inhibition indicated that thelephoric acid was a competitive inhibitor of CYP1A2 and CYP3A4. In contrast, thelephoric acid was a noncompetitive inhibitor of CYP2D6. Our findings indicate that thelephoric acid may be a novel, non-specific GYP inhibitor, suggesting that it could replace SKF-525A in inhibitory studies designed to investigate the effects of GYP enzymes on the metabolism of given compounds.