Author information
1Departamento de Bioquímica y Biología Molecular, Facultad de Farmacia, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain.
2Unidad de Gestión Clínica de Enfermedades Digestivas & Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Enfermedades Hepáticas y Digestivas (CIBERehd), Hospital Universitario de Valme, Sevilla, Spain.
3Departamento de Química Orgánica y Química Farmacéutica, Facultad de Farmacia, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain.
4Unidad de Farmacología Experimental y Clínica (UFEC), Hospital Universitario de Valme, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain.
Abstract
Ammonia production is implicated in the pathogenesis of hepatic encephalopathy (HE), being intestinal glutaminase activity the main source for ammonia. Management of ammonia formation can be effective in HE treatment by lowering intestinal ammonia production. The use of glutaminase inhibitors represents one way to achieve this goal. In this work, we have performed a search for specific inhibitors that could decrease glutaminase activity by screening two different groups of compounds: i) a group integrated by a diverse, highly pure small molecule compounds derived from thiourea ranging from 200 to 800 Daltons; and ii) a group integrated by commonly use compounds in the treatment of HE. Results shown that THDP-17 (10 µM), a thiourea derivate product, could inhibit the intestinal glutaminase activity (57.4±6.7%). Inhibitory effect was tissue dependent, ranging from 40±5.5% to 80±7.8% in an uncompetitive manner, showing Vmax and Km values of 384.62 µmol min-1, 13.62 mM with THDP-17 10 µM, respectively. This compound also decreased the glutaminase activity in Caco-2 cell cultures, showing a reduction of ammonia and glutamate production, compared to control cultures. Therefore, the THDP-17 compound could be a good candidate for HE management, by lowering ammonia production.