ABSTRACT:1-Aminobenzotriazole (1-ABT) is generally considered to be a nonselective mechanism-based inactivator of both human and nonhuman cytochrome P450 (P450) enzymes. Thus, 1-ABT is routinely used when conducting in vitro reaction phenotyping studies with new chemical entities in drug discovery to decipher P450 from non-P450-mediated metabolism. Experiments with pooled human liver microsomes (HLMs) demonstrated that carbon monoxide binding, although substantially reduced after a 30-min preincubation with 1-ABT, was still measurable. Thus, remaining activity of nine major human P450s (1A2, 2A6, 2B6, 2C8, 2C9, 2C19, 2D6, 2E1, and 3A4) in HLMs was determined using established selective probe substrates after 30-min preincubation with either 1-ABT (1 mM), a positive control time-dependent inhibitor, or a competitive inhibitor. Whereas P450 2A6 and 3A4 activity was essentially eliminated upon 30-min pretreatment with 1-ABT, the other human P450s were less affected, with at least 20% activity remaining after pretreatment. In contrast, most of the known P450 selective timedependent inhibitors were more effective inactivators than 1-ABT at lower concentrations. A particularly interesting finding was that 1-ABT was quite ineffective at inactivating P450 2C9, with roughly 60% activity remaining after pretreatment, which suggests that 1-ABT is much less selective for certain human P450s. This collection of data clearly demonstrates that assuming 1-ABT is a nonselective P450 inhibitor in vitro is risky, and false conclusions regarding remaining metabolic activity being non-P450 mediated after 1-ABT pretreatment may be made.In vitro reaction phenotyping, where enzymes contributing to the biotransformation of new chemical entities are identified, is a routine practice in drug discovery (Williams et al., 2003;Zhang et al., 2007). This information is essential for understanding the relative contributions of metabolic pathways to overall clearance and, thus, the risk of pharmacokinetic drug-drug interactions and/or interpatient variability in drug exposure. One critical issue in conducting these in vitro studies is having the appropriate tool substrates and inhibitors of the various human cytochrome P450 (P450) enzymes. A particularly useful tool inhibitor historically has been 1-aminobenzotriazole (1-ABT), which is thought to inactivate P450 enzymes nonselectively by covalent modification of the heme prosthetic group following bioactivation (Ortiz de Montellano and Mathews, 1981). Thus, it has become a common in vitro practice to preincubate either human liver microsomes (HLMs) or hepatocytes with high concentrations of 1-ABT (ϳ1 mM) before the introduction of test compounds (substrate-depletion approach) to decipher P450 from non-P450 mediated-metabolism (Dalmadi et al., 2003;Williams et al., 2003;Kostrubsky et al., 2006). Although it is acknowledged that this approach is useful for determining P450-mediated metabolism, the characterization of the specific effects of 1-ABT on the major human P450 enzymes in vitro has been l...