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  2. Drug-nutrient interactions: discovering prescription drug inhibitors of the thiamine transporter ThTR-2 (SLC19A3)

Drug-nutrient interactions: discovering prescription drug inhibitors of the thiamine transporter ThTR-2 (SLC19A3)

  • Am J Clin Nutr. 2020 Jan 1;111(1):110-121. doi: 10.1093/ajcn/nqz255.
Bianca Vora 1 Elizabeth A E Green 1 Natalia Khuri 2 Frida Ballgren 3 Marina Sirota 4 Kathleen M Giacomini 1
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.
  • 2 Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
  • 3 Department of Pharmaceutical Biosciences, Faculty of Pharmacy, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
  • 4 Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.
Abstract

Background: Transporter-mediated drug-nutrient interactions have the potential to cause serious adverse events. However, unlike drug-drug interactions, these drug-nutrient interactions receive little attention during drug development. The clinical importance of drug-nutrient interactions was highlighted when a phase III clinical trial was terminated due to severe adverse events resulting from potent inhibition of thiamine transporter 2 (ThTR-2; SLC19A3).

Objective: In this study, we tested the hypothesis that therapeutic drugs inhibit the intestinal thiamine transporter ThTR-2, which may lead to thiamine deficiency.

Methods: For this exploration, we took a multifaceted approach, starting with a high-throughput in vitro primary screen to identify inhibitors, building in silico models to characterize inhibitors, and leveraging real-world data from electronic health records to begin to understand the clinical relevance of these inhibitors.

Results: Our high-throughput screen of 1360 compounds, including many clinically used drugs, identified 146 potential inhibitors at 200 μM. Inhibition kinetics were determined for 28 drugs with half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) values ranging from 1.03 μM to >1 mM. Several oral drugs, including metformin, were predicted to have intestinal concentrations that may result in ThTR-2-mediated drug-nutrient interactions. Complementary analysis using electronic health records suggested that thiamine laboratory values are reduced in individuals receiving prescription drugs found to significantly inhibit ThTR-2, particularly in vulnerable populations (e.g., individuals with alcoholism).

Conclusions: Our comprehensive analysis of prescription drugs suggests that several marketed drugs inhibit ThTR-2, which may contribute to thiamine deficiency, especially in at-risk populations.

Keywords

clinical data; drug–nutrient interactions; electronic health records; high-throughput screen; machine learning; transporters; vitamin B1; vitamin deficiency.

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