Our newsletter this quarter looks at the use of microbial biotransformation to synthesize glucuronide metabolites, with a particular emphasis on the production of acyl glucuronides, arising from the metabolism of carboxylic acid-containing drugs.
In the client case study illustrated, quantities of both the acyl and ether glucuronides were needed to study pathways responsible for the drug candidate’s clearance. A subset of Hypha’s microbes were able to produce both glucuronides in good yields. Due to chemical intractability of the ether glucuronide, a streptomycete strain was scaled up to provide the metabolite, which was identical to that formed by incubation of the parent compound with recombinant human UGT1A4.
