Metabolism of pharmaceutical and personal care products by carrot cell cultures

Abstract

With the increasing use of treated wastewater and biosolids in agriculture, residues of pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) in these reused resources may contaminate food produce via plant uptake, constituting a route for human exposure. Although various PPCPs have been reported to be taken up by plants in laboratories or under field conditions, at present little information is available on their metabolism in plants. In this study, we applied carrot cell cultures to investigate the plant metabolism of PPCPs. Five phase I metabolites of carbamazepine were identified and the potential metabolism pathways of carbamazepine were proposed. We also used the carrot cell cultures as a rapid screening tool to initially assess the metabolism potentials of 18 PPCPs. Eleven PPCPs, including acetaminophen, caffeine, meprobamate, primidone, atenolol, trimethoprim, DEET, carbamazepine, dilantin, diazepam, and triclocarban, were found to be recalcitrant to metabolism. The other 7 PPCPs, including triclosan, naproxen, diclofenac, ibuprofen, gemfibrozil, sulfamethoxazole, and atorvastatin, displayed rapid metabolism, with 0.4-47.3% remaining in the culture at the end of the experiment. Further investigation using glycosidase hydrolysis showed that 1.3-20.6% of initially spiked naproxen, diclofenac, ibuprofen, and gemfibrozil were transformed into glycoside conjugates. Results from this study showed that plant cell cultures may be a useful tool for initially exploring the potential metabolites of PPCPs in plants as well as for rapidly screening the metabolism potentials of a variety of PPCPs or other emerging contaminants, and therefore may be used for prioritizing compounds for further comprehensive evaluations.

Linking the morphological and metabolomic response of Lactuca sativa L exposed to emerging contaminants using GC × GC-MS and chemometric tools

“…phytohormones and chlorophyll content) parameters have been reported under different experimental conditions 4–8 . Plants can transform the uptaken CECs through plant detoxification mechanisms involving enzymatic (phase I) and conjugation (phase II) processes 4, 5 . For instance, the presence of CECs can increase antioxidant enzymatic activities due to detoxification processes 6 .…”

Uptake and metabolism of the antidepressants sertraline, clomipramine, and trazodone in a garden cress (Lepidium sativum) model

“…In order to identify potential metabolites, the cress was treated with a concentration of 10 mg/L antidepressants in tap water. Despite such concentrations being very unlikely to occur in the natural environment, this concentration range has been regularly used in similar studies .…”

Formation of biologically active benzodiazepine metabolites in Arabidopsis thaliana cell cultures and vegetable plants under hydroponic conditions

“…Several studies have focused on the uptake and accumulation of pharmaceuticals in agricultural plants as a result of TWW irrigation (e.g., Wu et al, 2013Wu et al, , 2014Goldstein et al, 2014;Carter et al, 2014). These studies have demonstrated the capacity of higher plants to take up these compounds; however, until recently, relatively little consideration has been given to their metabolism in plants (Fu et al, 2017a(Fu et al, , 2017bHe et al, 2017;Huber et al, 2009Huber et al, , 2012Wu et al, 2015). Recent studies have shown that higher plants can metabolize xenobiotics similarly to humans with phase I modification reactions followed by phase II conjugation reactions using detoxification enzymes that function as a 'green liver' (Sandermann, 1992).…”