Investigation on drug-binding in heme pocket of CYP2C19 with UV-visible and resonance Raman spectroscopies.

Cytochrome P450 (CYP) is a class of heme-containing enzymes which mainly catalyze a monooxygenation reaction of various chemicals, and hence CYP plays a key role in the drug metabolism. Although CYP2C19 isoform is a minor hepatic CYP, it metabolizes clinically important drugs such as omeprazole and S‑mephenytoin. In this work, the interaction of purified CYP2C19 WT (CYP2C19) with seven drugs (phenytoin, S‑mephenytoin, omeprazole, lansoprazole, cimetidine, propranolol, and warfarin) was investigated using spectroscopic methods. The binding of each drug and the induced structural change in the heme distal environment were evaluated. Ferric form of CYP2C19 was revealed to contain a six-coordinate low-spin heme with a water molecule as a sixth ligand in a distal site, and the addition of each drug caused varied minor fraction of five-coordinate heme. It was suggested that the ligated water molecule was partly moved away from the heme distal environment and that the degree of water removal was dependent on the type of drugs. The effect on the coordination was varied with the studied drugs with wide variation in the dissociation constants from 2.6 μM for lansoprazole to 5400 μM for warfarin. Phenytoin and S‑mephenytoin showed that binding to CYP2C19 occurred in a stepwise manner and that the coordination of a water molecule was facilitated in the second binding step. In the ferrous CO-bound state, ν(FeCO) stretching mode was clearly observed at 471 cm in the absence of drugs. The Raman line was greatly up-shifted by omeprazole (487 cm) and lansoprazole (477 cm) but was minimally affected by propranolol, phenytoin, and S‑mephenytoin. These results indicate that slight chemical modification of a drug greatly affects the heme distal environments upon binding.