Prediction of metabolism-induced hepatotoxicity on three-dimensional hepatic cell culture and enzyme microarrays

• Published in: Archives of toxicology Vol. 92; no. 3; pp. 1295 - 1310
• Main Authors: Yu, Kyeong-Nam, Nadanaciva, Sashi, Rana, Payal, Lee, Dong Woo, Ku, Bosung, Roth, Alexander D., Dordick, Jonathan S., Will, Yvonne, Lee, Moo-Yeal
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.03.2018; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Animals; Biocompatibility; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biomedicine; Carcinoma, Hepatocellular - pathology; Cell culture; Cell Culture Techniques - methods; Cell Line, Tumor; Cell lines; Chemical and Drug Induced Liver Injury - etiology; Chemical and Drug Induced Liver Injury - metabolism; Drug development; Environmental Health; Enzymes; Enzymes - analysis; Enzymes - metabolism; Hepatocytes; Hepatoma; Hepatotoxicity; High-Throughput Screening Assays - instrumentation; High-Throughput Screening Assays - methods; Humans; Inhibitory Concentration 50; Lab-On-A-Chip Devices; Lethal Dose 50; Liver; Liver Neoplasms - pathology; Metabolism; Metabolites; Miniaturization; Occupational Medicine/Industrial Medicine; Organ Toxicity and Mechanisms; Pharmacology/Toxicology; Predictions; Protein Array Analysis - instrumentation; Protein Array Analysis - methods; Rats; Sensitivity and Specificity; Side effects; Toxicity; Toxicity Tests - instrumentation; Toxicity Tests - methods; Metabolizing enzyme microarray; Metabolism-induced hepatotoxicity; DataChip/MetaChip; Three-dimensional (3D) cell culture array; High-throughput toxicity screening
• ISSN: 0340-5761; 1432-0738
• DOI: 10.1007/s00204-017-2126-3

Human liver contains various oxidative and conjugative enzymes that can convert nontoxic parent compounds to toxic metabolites or, conversely, toxic parent compounds to nontoxic metabolites. Unlike primary hepatocytes, which contain myriad drug-metabolizing enzymes (DMEs), but are difficult to culture and maintain physiological levels of DMEs, immortalized hepatic cell lines used in predictive toxicity assays are easy to culture, but lack the ability to metabolize compounds. To address this limitation and predict metabolism-induced hepatotoxicity in high-throughput, we developed an advanced miniaturized three-dimensional (3D) cell culture array (DataChip 2.0) and an advanced metabolizing enzyme microarray (MetaChip 2.0). The DataChip is a functionalized micropillar chip that supports the Hep3B human hepatoma cell line in a 3D microarray format. The MetaChip is a microwell chip containing immobilized DMEs found in the human liver. As a proof of concept for generating compound metabolites in situ on the chip and rapidly assessing their toxicity, 22 model compounds were dispensed into the MetaChip and sandwiched with the DataChip. The IC 50 values obtained from the chip platform were correlated with rat LD 50 values, human C max values, and drug-induced liver injury categories to predict adverse drug reactions in vivo. As a result, the platform had 100% sensitivity, 86% specificity, and 93% overall predictivity at optimum cutoffs of IC 50 and C max values. Therefore, the DataChip/MetaChip platform could be used as a high-throughput, early stage, microscale alternative to conventional in vitro multi-well plate platforms and provide a rapid and inexpensive assessment of metabolism-induced toxicity at early phases of drug development.