Chapter 21:Metabolism-Based Toxicology Prediction

Metabolism of drugs is a major contributor to the toxicity of drugs and drug candidates. One provocative aspect is the covalent binding of drug metabolites to proteins, which is correlated with toxicity but not in a very strict relationship. Progress has been made in the prediction of both metabolism and toxicity. Confounding problems include the difficulties in predicting sites and rates of drug oxidations and other enzymatic reactions, the relationship between in vitro and in vivo phenomena, and interspecies differences. Dose is an issue in most quantitative predictions.