Liver perfusion technique has been used in drug study for many decades. Liver perfusion has outstanding advantages over other techniques, such as isolated hepatocytes, hepatic cell lines, and hepatocyte membrane vesicles.It is an ideal experimental model used in drug metabolism, drug-drug interactions, and pharmacokinetic studies. Liver perfusion technique, its advantages or disadvantages, and its extensive applications have been reviewed.

Drug metabolism will change significantly during inflammation, including the reduction of expression and activity of many drug metabolizing enzymes and transporters. Body would release a series of inflammatory cytokines which can regulate drug metabolizing enzymes. Recent studies have revealed that drug transporters are also regulated by the cytokines with obvious species difference. Mechanism studies show that several transcription factors play important roles during the signal pathways of regulation. This review focuses on the progress in the regulation of drug transporters during inflammation.

Regulation of the activity of CYP450 has always been research focus of drug metabolism. The effect of compounds on the mRNA and protein expression level of CYP450 is the main purpose of most of the existing reports. In recent years, the protein modification in the posttranslation level has been found to participate in maintaining the proper function of CYP450, thus effect of posttranslational modification on the enzyme activity has been paid more and more attention. Posttranslational modifications including phosphorylation, nitration, and ubiquitination have been described to regulate the activity of CYP450. In this paper, recent developments in the effects of posttranslational modifications on the activity of CYP450 have been reviewed.

Nuclear receptors pregnane X receptor (PXR) and constitutive androstane receptor (CAR) are originally characterized as transcription factors regulating many target genes. Recent works have revealed that these nuclear receptors play critical roles in regulating genes that encode drug metabolism enzymes and modulating hepatic energy metabolism, such as down-regulating gluconeogenesis, fatty acid oxidation, and ketogenesis, as well as up-regulating lipogenesis. Studies on PXR and CAR have important implication on drug-drug interaction (DDI) and potential disease treatment targets.

For more than 40 years primary hepatocytes culture technique has been utilized extensively for assessing effects of drug on metabolizing enzymes (especially cytochromes P450), drug metabolism, drug-drug interactions, and the mechanisms of cytotoxicity and genotoxicity. Human derived primary hepatocytes reserve the metabolism function and enzyme activity of liver. Therefore, this technique has been widely used as a reliable and efficient tool in the drug and xenobiotics evaluation and screen in vitro. This review focuses on primary culture technique of hepatocytes and its application in drug metabolism and toxicology research and evaluation.

Objective To observe the effects of cryptotanshinone (CTS) on cytochrome P450 (CYP) isoforms in the rat liver microsomes. Method The rats were randomized into six groups according to the body weight, 3 rats in each group. CTS groups were treated with CTS at the doses of 20～540 mg/kg per day for 10 days, and the negative control group was treated with 10 mL/kg hydroxylpropyl-β-cyclodextrin solution. The positive group was injected with β-NF(80 mg/kg) intraperitoneally on the 7th day, and all the animals were sacrificed by decapitation on the 10th day after last dose. The liver was got out for the preparation of liver microsomes. The activities of six kinds of CYP isoforms were detected by cocktail in-vitro incubation method. Besides, the expression level of CYP isoforms mRNA and protein in rat liver was analyzed by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and western-blotting assay, respectively. Results CTS significantly increased the ac-tivity of CYP1A2 in a dose-dependent manner. In CTS groups at the dosages of 20～540 mg/kg, the activity of CYP1A2 was 60 %～430 % higher, CYP1A2 protein expression level was 130 %～320 % higher, and CYP1A2 mRNA expression level was 10 %～150 % higher than that of the negative control group. CTS had no effect on other kinds of CYP isoforms. Conclu-sion CTS can induce hepatic microsome CYP1A2 expression significantly, which indicates potential drug-drug interaction might occurred when CTS is co-administrated with those drugs metabolized by CYP1A2.

This study is purposed to investigate the effects of praeruptorin A (PA) and praeruptorin C (PC) on UGT1A1 in HepG2 cells through hCAR pathway. PA and PC were incubated with HepG2 cells for 24 h and 48 h, mRNA and protein expressions of UGT1A1 were determined by real-time PCR and Western blotting assays. Additionally, effects of PA and PC on UGT1A1 mRNA and protein expressions were also measured after transient transfection of a specific CAR siRNA for 72 h in HepG2 cells. UGT1A1 mRNA and protein expression levels were significantly increased by PA and PC after incubation for 48 h. Moreover, the mRNA and protein up-regulations of UGT1A1 were attenuated by transient transfection of a specific CAR siRNA, suggesting the induction was mediated by CAR. The results suggest that PA and PC can significantly up-regulate UGT1A1 expression partially via the CAR-mediated pathway.

Aim To develop an in vitro high throughput drug screening system based on reporter gene assay for identification of novel compounds with PXR, FXR and LXRα agonist activity. Methods The expressions of exogenous PXR, FXR and LXRαgene in HEK293, HepG2 and LS174T cells were examined by Real-Time quantity PCR. pSG5-hPXR and pGL3-XREM-CYP3A4, pEGFP-N3-hFXR and EcRE-TK-Luc, pCMX-FLAG-hLXRα and pGL3-XREM-CYP3A4 were cotransfected into cells and the optimal ratio of three plasmids was determined. The dose-response relationship between the positive drug and the fold induction was determined. The specificity of the model was ex-amined, and the repeatability was also determined by Z′ value. Results ① The PXR, FXR and LXRα mRNA expression in HEK293 cell is low among three different cells. ②reporter gene vector and expression plasmid ratio of 1∶ 1, 2∶ 1 and 2∶ 1 were proved to be suitable for highest relative luciferase activity for PXR, FXR or LXRα agonist screening model. ③ The relative luciferase activity was induced by Rif, CDCA or T0901317 in a dose-dependent manner. ④Only Rif, CDCA or T0901317 could significantly increase the relative luciferase activity in PXR,FXR or LXRα agonist screening model, no effect of other nuclear re-ceptors agonist was observed, and the values of Z′-factor for PXR, FXR and LXRαagonist screening model were 0. 58, 0. 66 and 0. 63, respectively. Conclusion An in vitro PXR, FXR and LXRα agonist high-throughput screening models are devel-oped with acceptable specificity and repeatability, and the mod-els can be used to screen PXR, FXR and LXRα agonist.

This study aims to investigate the function of two SNPs (rs8904C > T and rs696G >A) in 3' untranslated region (3'UTR) of NFKBIA gene by constructing luciferase reporter gene. A patient's genomic DNA with rs8904 CC and rs696 GA genotype was used as the PCR template. Full-length 3'UTR of NFKBIA gene was amplified by different primers. After sequencing validation, these fragments were inserted to the luciferase reporter vector, pGL3-promoter to construct recombinant plasmids containing four kinds of haplotypes, pGL3-rs8904C/rs696G, pGL3-rs8904C/rs696A, pGL3-rs8904T/rs696G and pGL3-rs8904T/rs696A. Then these plasmids were transfected into LS174T cells and the luciferase activity was detected. Compared with pGL3-vector transfected cells (negative control), the luciferase activity of the four kinds of recombinant plasmids was significantly decreased (P < 0.001). For rs696G > A, the luciferase activity of the recombinant plasmids containing A allele (pGL3-rs8904C/rs696A and pGL3-rs8904T/rs696A) was about 45.1% (P < 0.05) and 56.1% (P < 0.001) lower than those containing G allele (pGL3-rs8904C/rs696G and pGL3-rs8904T/rs696G), respectively. For rs8904C > T, there were no significant differences in the luciferase activity between the recombinant plasmids containing T allele and those with C allele. Together, the luciferase reporter gene vectors containing SNPs in NFKBIA gene 3'UTR were constructed successfully and rs696G > A could decrease the luciferase activity while rs8904C >T didn't have much effect on the luciferase activity.