ABSTRACT:Lack of an established cell line model to study induction of cytochromes P450 (P450s) and drug transporters poses a challenge in predicting in vivo drug-drug interactions. Although not well characterized, LS180 cells could be an excellent cell line to study induction of P450s and transporters because they express pregnane X receptor (PXR). Therefore, as part of a larger study of in vitro to in vivo prediction of inductive drug interactions, we determined induction of various P450s and drug transporters by the anti-human deficiency virus protease inhibitors (PIs) and the prototypic inducer, rifampin, in LS180 cells. Among these proteins, the various PIs significantly induced (n ؍ 3-5) only CYP3A4 and multidrug resistance transporter 1 (MDR1) transcripts (2-to 50-fold). CYP3A4 activity (1-hydroxymidazolam formation) was increased (2-fold) by rifampin (10 M) but was reduced by the PIs (1.5-to 7-fold). Surprisingly, constitutive androstane receptor 1 (CAR1) was not found to be expressed in these cells. Additionally, using a reporter assay, we found that PIs did not activate CAR3 (the natural splice variant of CAR1) but significantly activated PXR (2-to 24-fold), which correlated well with induction of CYP3A4 and MDR1 transcripts (ϳr ؍ 0.9). Furthermore, in a PXR-knockdown stable LS180 cell line, induction of CYP3A4 and MDR1 mRNA after treatment with PIs and rifampin was significantly reduced (1.4-to 5-fold) compared with that in PXR nonsilenced cells. Based on these data, we conclude that LS180 cells could be used as a readily available, high-throughput cell line to screen for PXR-mediated induction of CYP3A4 and MDR1 transcripts. These data also indicate that the majority of the PIs are likely to produce intestinal drug-drug interactions by inactivating or inhibiting CYP3A enzymes even though they induce CYP3A4 and MDR1 transcripts via PXR.To date, much of the focus on clinically significant drug interactions has been on metabolic-based inhibitory drug interactions. However, there is increasing appreciation that inductive drug interactions are more common than previously thought, and such interactions can also extend to transporters. For this reason, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recently issued draft guidance on models to study inductive drug interactions. This draft guidance states that "At this time, the most reliable method to study a drug's induction potential is to quantify the enzyme activity of primary hepatocyte cultures following treatments including the potential inducer drug, a positive control inducer drug [rifampin for CYP3A4], and vehicle-treated hepatocytes (negative control), respectively"