Valacyclovir is the 5-valyl ester prodrug of acyclovir, an effective anti-herpetic drug. Systemic availability of acyclovir in humans is three to five times higher when administered orally as the prodrug. The increased bioavailability of valacyclovir is attributed to carrier-mediated intestinal absorption, via the hPEPT1 peptide transporter, followed by the rapid and complete conversion to acyclovir. The one or more human enzymes responsible for in vivo activation of the prodrug to the active drug and its conversion sites, however, have not been identified. In this report, we describe the purification, identification, and characterization of a human enzyme that activates valacyclovir to acyclovir. A protein with significant hydrolytic activity toward valacyclovir, the 5-glycyl ester of acyclovir, and the 5-valyl ester of zidovudine (AZT), was purified from Caco-2 cells derived from human intestine. Using a non-redundant data base search, the N-terminal 19-amino acid sequence of the purified 27-kDa, basic protein revealed a perfect match within the N terminus of a serine hydrolase, Biphenyl hydrolase-like (BPHL, gi:4757862) protein, previously cloned from human breast carcinoma. Recombinant BPHL exhibited significant hydrolytic activity for both valacyclovir and valganciclovir with specificity constants (k cat /K m ), 420 and 53.2 mM ؊1 ⅐s ؊1 , respectively. We conclude that BPHL may be an important enzyme activating valacyclovir and valganciclovir in humans and an important new target for prodrug design.Prodrugs of therapeutically active agents have been used to improve pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical, and pharmacokinetic properties of numerous active therapeutic agents. Prodrugs are designed to be inactive until in vivo activation to the parent drug, and hence reliable in vivo activation of the prodrug is considered critical for their pharmacological activity (1). Identification of the mechanism of in vivo activation of prodrugs is important for prodrug design and for investigating clinical applications. Furthermore, design and development of prodrugs for humans has been significantly hampered by the unknown species differences in the activating enzymes. Thus, identification of the one or more prodrug-activating enzymes will significantly aid in the selection of animal models for human drug development.The participation of peptidases or esterases in prodrug activation will depend on the pro-moiety, its linker to the parent drug, as well as the parent drug. For several prodrugs, their in vivo activation mechanism has been studied in more detail. For example, the anti-cancer prodrug, CPT-11 (irinotecan), a carbamate derivative of 7-ethyl-10-hydroxycamptothecin, is converted to its active metabolite, 7-ethyl-10-hydroxycamptothecin by human carboxylesterases. The efficiency of hydrolysis varies depending on isoforms such that carboxylesterase 2 (hCE2) 1 and intestinal carboxylesterase (hiCE) are more efficient activators than human liver carboxylesterase 1 (hCE1) (2-4). The angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor...