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Evaluation of Giardia lamblia thioredoxin reductase as drug activating enzyme and as drug target.

ABSTRACT: The antioxidative enzyme thioredoxin reductase (TrxR) has been suggested to be a drug target in several pathogens, including the protist parasite Giardia lamblia. TrxR is also believed to catalyse the reduction of nitro drugs, e.g. metronidazole and furazolidone, a reaction required to render these compounds toxic to G. lamblia and other microaerophiles/anaerobes. It was the objective of this study to assess the potential of TrxR as a drug target in G. lamblia and to find direct evidence for the role of this enzyme in the activation of metronidazole and other nitro drugs. TrxR was overexpressed approximately 10-fold in G. lamblia WB C6 cells by placing the trxR gene behind the arginine deiminase (ADI) promoter on a plasmid. Likewise, a mutant TrxR with a defective disulphide reductase catalytic site was strongly expressed in another G. lamblia WB C6 cell line. Susceptibilities to five antigiardial drugs, i.e. metronidazole, furazolidone, nitazoxanide, albendazole and auranofin were determined in both transfectant cell lines and compared to wildtype. Further, the impact of all five drugs on TrxR activity in vivo was measured. Overexpression of TrxR rendered G. lamblia WB C6 more susceptible to metronidazole and furazolidone but not to nitazoxanide, albendazole, and auranofin. Of all five drugs tested, only auranofin had an appreciably negative effect on TrxR activity in vivo, albeit to a much smaller extent than expected. Overexpression of TrxR and mutant TrxR had hardly any impact on growth of G. lamblia WB C6, although the enzyme also exerts a strong NADPH oxidase activity which is a source of oxidative stress. Our results constitute first direct evidence for the notion that TrxR is an activator of metronidazole and furazolidone but rather question that it is a relevant drug target of presently used antigiardial drugs.

SUBMITTER: Leitsch D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4971154 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Evaluation of Giardia lamblia thioredoxin reductase as drug activating enzyme and as drug target.

Leitsch David D Müller Joachim J Müller Norbert N

International journal for parasitology. Drugs and drug resistance 20160722 3

The antioxidative enzyme thioredoxin reductase (TrxR) has been suggested to be a drug target in several pathogens, including the protist parasite Giardia lamblia. TrxR is also believed to catalyse the reduction of nitro drugs, e.g. metronidazole and furazolidone, a reaction required to render these compounds toxic to G. lamblia and other microaerophiles/anaerobes. It was the objective of this study to assess the potential of TrxR as a drug target in G. lamblia and to find direct evidence for the ...[more]

PMID: 27485086

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Project description:BackgroundGiardiasis is an intestinal infection correlated with poverty and poor drinking water quality, and treatment options are limited. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Giardia infections afflict nearly 33% of people in developing countries, and 2% of the adult population in the developed world. This study describes the single cyclic nucleotide-specific phosphodiesterase (PDE) of G. lamblia and assesses PDE inhibitors as a new generation of anti-giardial drugs.MethodsAn extensive search of the Giardia genome database identified a single gene coding for a class I PDE, GlPDE. The predicted protein sequence was analyzed in-silico to characterize its domain structure and catalytic domain. Enzymatic activity of GlPDE was established by complementation of a PDE-deficient Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain, and enzyme kinetics were characterized in soluble yeast lysates. The potency of known PDE inhibitors was tested against the activity of recombinant GlPDE expressed in yeast and against proliferating Giardia trophozoites. Finally, the localization of epitope-tagged and ectopically expressed GlPDE in Giardia cells was investigated.ResultsGiardia encodes a class I PDE. Catalytically important residues are fully conserved between GlPDE and human PDEs, but sequence differences between their catalytic domains suggest that designing Giardia-specific inhibitors is feasible. Recombinant GlPDE hydrolyzes cAMP with a Km of 408 μM, and cGMP is not accepted as a substrate. A number of drugs exhibit a high degree of correlation between their potency against the recombinant enzyme and their inhibition of trophozoite proliferation in culture. Epitope-tagged GlPDE localizes as dots in a pattern reminiscent of mitosomes and to the perinuclear region in Giardia.ConclusionsOur data strongly suggest that inhibition of G. lamblia PDE activity leads to a profound inhibition of parasite proliferation and that GlPDE is a promising target for developing novel anti-giardial drugs.

Project description:Acetaminophen (APAP) is metabolized in the liver to N-acetyl-p-benzoquinone imine (NAPQI), an electrophilic metabolite known to bind liver proteins resulting in hepatotoxicity. Mammalian thioredoxin reductase (TrxR) is a cellular antioxidant containing selenocysteine (Sec) in its C-terminal redox center, a highly accessible target for electrophilic modification. In the present study, we determined if NAPQI targets TrxR. Hepatotoxicity induced by APAP treatment of mice (300 mg/kg, i.p.) was associated with a marked inhibition of both cytosolic TrxR1 and mitochondrial TrxR2 activity. Maximal inhibition was detected at 1 and 6 h post-APAP for TrxR1 and TrxR2, respectively. In purified rat liver TrxR1, enzyme inactivation was correlated with the metabolic activation of APAP by cytochrome P450, indicating that enzyme inhibition was due to APAP-reactive metabolites. NAPQI was also found to inhibit TrxR1. NADPH-reduced TrxR1 was significantly more sensitive to NAPQI (IC50 = 0.023 μM) than the oxidized enzyme (IC50 = 1.0 μM) or a human TrxR1 Sec498Cys mutant enzyme (IC50 = 17 μM), indicating that cysteine and selenocysteine residues in the redox motifs of TrxR are critical for enzyme inactivation. This is supported by our findings that alkylation of reduced TrxR with biotin-conjugated iodoacetamide, which selectively reacts with selenol or thiol groups on proteins, was inhibited by NAPQI. LC-MS/MS analysis confirmed that NAPQI modified cysteine 59, cysteine 497, and selenocysteine 498 residues in the redox centers of TrxR, resulting in enzyme inhibition. In addition to disulfide reduction, TrxR is also known to mediate chemical redox cycling. We found that menadione redox cycling by TrxR was markedly less sensitive to NAPQI than disulfide reduction, suggesting that TrxR mediates these reactions via distinct mechanisms. These data demonstrate that APAP-reactive metabolites target TrxR, suggesting an additional mechanism by which APAP induces oxidative stress and hepatotoxicity.

Dataset Information

Evaluation of Giardia lamblia thioredoxin reductase as drug activating enzyme and as drug target.

Publications

Evaluation of Giardia lamblia thioredoxin reductase as drug activating enzyme and as drug target.

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