Coordinated induction of drug transporters and phase I and II metabolism in human liver slices

Although regulation of phase I drug metabolism in human liver is relatively well studied, the regulation of phase II enzymes and of drug transporters is incompletely characterized. Therefore, we used human liver slices to investigate the PXR, CAR and AhR-mediated induction of drug transporters and phase I and II metabolic enzymes. Precision-cut human liver slices were incubated for 5 or 24 h with prototypical inducers: phenobarbital (PB) (50 mu M) for CAR, beta-naphthoflavone (BNF) (25 mu M) for AhR, and rifampicin (RIF) (10 mu M) for PXR, and gene expression of the phase I enzymes CYP1A1, 1A2, 3A4, 3A5, 2136, 2A6, the phase II enzymes UGT1A1 and 1A6, and the transporters MRP2, MDR1, BSEP, …