Interactions between cyclophosphamide and doxorubicin metabolism in rats. II. Effect of cyclophosphamide on the aldoketoreductase system.

Under anaerobic conditions, in comparison to liver microsomes obtained from normal controls, liver microsomes obtained from rats pretreated with cyclophosphamide formed significantly less 7-deoxydoxorubicinol aglycone (P less than or equal to .05), whereas the disappearance of doxorubicin and the formation of 7-deoxydoxorubicin aglycone were unaffected. When directly investigated, the reduction of 7-deoxydoxorubicin aglycone to 7-deoxydoxorubicinol aglycone by microsomes was inhibited by cyclophosphamide pretreatment. Liver cytosols from controls and cyclophosphamide-treated rats reduced daunorubicin to daunorubicinol and 7-deoxydoxorubicin aglycone to 7-deoxydoxorubicinol aglycone at the same rate, which indicates the lack of effect of cyclophosphamide pretreatment on the cytosolic aldoketoreductase. The results suggest the existence of a microsomal carbonyl reduction system for anthracycline antibiotics and indicate that cyclophosphamide does affect the metabolism of doxorubicin; in rats, this interaction results only in an alteration of the relative concentrations of presumably inactive metabolites, the 7-deoxyaglycones. The importance of these findings for the pharmacological interaction between doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide in humans remains to be investigated.