CONCEPT - TESTS OF THE LIVER SPECIFICITY OF DRUG GLUCURONIDATION

Hellerstein and Landau and their coworkers have developed the glucuron ide conjugate approach to aid in the analysis of pathways of liver car bohydrate metabolism. This approach requires that the liver is essenti ally the sole site of glucuronidation of the given drug. Since UDPgluc uronyl transferases are present also in other tissues, most notably th e kidney and intestines, we need to test the liver specificity of this process. We develop isotopic approaches to do this, based upon a comp arison of the specific activity of the conjugate with that of plasma g lucose and liver glucose-6P.