Abstract

Raloxifene, a selective estrogen receptor modulator, exhibits quite large interindividual variability in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. In women, raloxifene is metabolized extensively by different isoforms of UDP-glucuronosyltransferase (UGT) to its glucuronides. To gain an insight into intestine, kidney, liver, and lung glucuronidation of raloxifene, human microsomes of all tested organs were used. Raloxifene-6-β-glucuronide (M1) formation followed the Michaelis-Menten kinetics in intestinal, kidney, and liver microsomes; meanwhile, raloxifene-4′-β-glucuronide (M2) formation followed the substrate inhibition kinetics. Human lung microsomes did not show any glucuronidation activity. The tissue intrinsic clearances for kidney, intestine, and liver were 3.4, 28.1, and 39.6 ml · min⁻¹ · kg⁻¹, respectively. The aim of our in vitro study was to explain the mechanism behind the observed influence of UGT1A1*28 polymorphism on raloxifene pharmacokinetics in a small-sized in vivo study (Br J Clin Pharmacol 67:437–444, 2009). Incubation of raloxifene with human liver microsomes genotyped for UGT1A1*28 showed a significantly reduced metabolic clearance toward M1 in microsomes from donors with *28 allele. On the contrary, no significant genotype influence was observed on the formation of M2 because of the high variability in estimated apparent kinetic parameters, although a clear trend toward lower glucuronidation activities was observed when UGT1A1*28 polymorphism was present. The liver intrinsic clearances of both homozygotes differed significantly, whereas the clearance of heterozygotes did not differ from the wild-type and the mutated homozygotes. In conclusion, our results show the high importance of the liver and intestine in raloxifene glucuronidation. Moreover, the significant influence of UGT1A1*28 polymorphism on metabolism of raloxifene was confirmed.