Bioactivation of 4-Ipomeanol by CYP4B1: Adduct characterization and evidence for an enedial intermediate

4-Ipomeanol (IPO) is a pneumotoxin that is bioactivated to a reactive intermediate that binds to DNA and other cellular macromolecules. Despite over 30 years of research in this area, detailed structural information on the nature of the IPO reactive intermediate is still lacking. In the present study, we reacted IPO with rabbit CYP4B1 in the presence of exogenous nucleophiles and analyzed the products by liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry. Coincubation of IPO and rabbit CYP4B1 with glutathione gave rise to multiple products due likely to the presence of both sulfur and nitrogen nucleophiles in the same trapping molecule. Reaction mixtures containing equimolar N-acetyl cysteine (NAC) and N-acetyl lysine (NAL) provided a major NADPH- and CYP4B1-dependent product. A combination of high-resolution mass spectrometry and two-dimensional NMR analysis following large-scale isolation of the biologically derived material provided evidence for an N-substituted cysteinyl pyrrole derivative of IPO, analogous to that characterized previously in model chemical studies conducted with cis-2-butene-1,4-dial. Purified native rabbit lung CYP4B1 and purified recombinant rabbit CYP4B1 produced the trapped NAC/NAL-IPO pyrrole adduct at rates of 600-700 nmol/nmol P450/30 min. A panel of 14 commercially available recombinant human CYPs was also studied, and substantial rates of IPO bioactivation (> 100 nmol/nmol/30 min) were observed with CYP1A2, CYP2C19, CYP2D6, and CYP3A4. These studies provide evidence for the formation of an enedial reactive intermediate during CYP-mediated IPO bioactivation, identify multiple human liver P450s capable of IPO bioactivation, and demonstrate that the same reactive intermediate is formed by both rabbit CYP4B1 and human P450s.