Drug interaction study of flavonoids toward CYP3A4 and their quantitative structure activity relationship (QSAR) analysis for predicting potential effects

The high risk of herb-drug interactions (HDIs) mediated by the herbal medicines and dietary supplements which containing abundant Flavonoids had become more and more frequent in our daily life. In our study, the inhibition activities of 44 different structures of Flavonoids toward human CYPs were systemically evaluated for the first time. According to our results, a remarkable structure-dependent inhibition behavior toward CYP3A4 was observed in vitro. Some Flavonoids such as licoflavone (12) and irilone (30) exhibited the selective inhibition toward CYP3 A4 rather than other major human CYPs. To illustrate the interaction mechanism, the inhibition kinetics of various compounds was further performed. Sophoranone (1), apigenin (10), baicalein (11), 5,4'-dihydroxy-3,6,7,8,3'-pentamethoxyflavone (15), myricetin (23) and kushenol K (38) remarkably inhibited the CYP3 A4-catalyzed bufalin 5'-hydroxylation reaction, with K_i values of 2.17 ± 0.29, 6.15 ± 0.39, 9.18 ± 3.40, 2.30 ± 0.36, 5.00 ± 2.77 and 1.35 ± 0.25 μM, respectively. Importantly, compounds 1, 11, 15, 23 and 38 could significantly inhibit the metabolism of some clinical drugs in vitro, and these drug-drug interactions (DDIs) of myricetin (23) or kushenol K (38) with clinical drug diazepam were further verified in human primary hepatocytes, respectively. Finally, a quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) of Flavonoids with their inhibitory effects toward CYP3 A4 was established using computational methods. Our findings illustrated the high risk of herb-drug interactions (HDIs) caused by Flavonoids and revealed the vital structures requirement of natural Flavonoids for the HDIs with clinical drugs eliminated by CYP3 A4. Our research provided the useful guidance to safely and rationally use herbal medicines and dietary supplements containing rich natural Flavonoids components.