Major involvement of rabbit liver cytochrome P4501A in thiabendazole 5-hydroxylation.

1. Thiabendazole is a widely used food preservative and anthelmintic drug for breeding animal species. In order to characterize precisely the cytochrome P450 isozyme(s) involved in its major route of metabolism, a rapid and sensitive spectrofluorimetric method was developed for the simultaneous determination of thiabendazole and its main hepatic metabolite 5-hydroxythiabendazole. 2. The kinetics of thiabendazole 5-hydroxylation were determined in microsomal preparations from control rabbits or animals previously treated with either beta-naphthoflavone, isosafrole, phenobarbital, rifampicin or clofibrate. These treatments led to specific induction of CYP1A1, 1A2, 2B4, 3A6 and 4A1 respectively. 3. By considering this panel of characterised microsomal preparations, only those obtained from BNF-treated rabbits exhibited an increase in thiabendazole 5-hydroxylase activity Ethoxyresorufin O-deethylation in these microsomes was solely inhibited by thiabendazole. These argue for a specific involvement of the CYP1A subfamily. 4. In the CYP1A subfamily, CYP1A2 appears to be responsible for basal 5-hydroxylation and further unidentified metabolism of thiabendazole in control livers. However, the major involvement of CYP1A1 is supported by the following characteristics of 5-hydroxylation of thiabendazole: (1) the correlation with CYP1A1 expression and (2) the inhibition by ellipticine and not by furafylline, inhibitors of CYP1A1 and CYP1A2 respectively. 5. All these data demonstrated that the rabbit cytochrome P4501A is predominantly involved in thiabendazole 5-hydroxylation which has been suspected to be critical in terms of safety of the parent drug.

Structural requirements for the induction of cytochromes P450 by benzimidazole anthelmintic derivatives in cultured rabbit hepatocytes.

The effect of sulfur-containing benzimidazoles (thiabendazole, 5-hydroxy-thiabendazole, cambendazole) and sulfur-free derivatives (benzimidazole, carbendazim and 5-hydroxycarbendazim) on cytochrome P450 enzymes was investigated in primary cultures of rabbit hepatocytes considered 72 h after plating. Thiabendazole, cambendazole and carbendazim led to a significant dose-dependent increase in both EROD activity and cytochrome P4501A1/2 proteins and mRNA expression. Experiments using actinomycin D strongly suggest that these compounds have a transcriptional control on both CYP1A1 and CYP1A2 genes in primary hepatocytes. Thiabendazole increased both COH activity and P4502A protein levels. We conclude that sulfur is not a prerequisite to the P450 induction potential of benzimidazoles, while 5-hydroxylation leads to inefficient metabolites in terms of inducibility.

Thiabendazole is an inducer of cytochrome P4501A1 in cultured rabbit hepatocytes.

The effect of TBZ (30-100 microM) was investigated on cytochromes P450 of cultured rabbit hepatocytes considered 72 h after plating. At the highest concentrations and without apparent cellular toxicity, the drug provokes a dose-dependent increase in total microsomal cytochrome P450 and a rise in EROD activity which was correlated to a specific increase in P4501A1 level. Northern blot analysis of RNA reveals an increased level of mRNA specific to P4501A1. The transcriptional activation of this isoenzyme is proposed because of the significant inhibition of the above-mentioned increases when actinomycin was added to the culture medium. Data obtained from competition experiments demonstrate that TBZ is not a ligand of Ah receptor. A down-regulation process could explain the slight decrease in both ANOH and P4502E1 level observed in hepatocytes treated with the highest dose of TBZ.