Assessment of Temporal Biochemical and Gene Transcription Changes in Rat Liver Cytochrome P450: Utility of Real-Time Quantitative RT-PCR

Purpose. A conventional approach to assess cytochrome P450 (CYP) induction in preclinical animal models involves daily dosing for a least a week followed by Western blot and/or enzyme activity analysis. To evaluate the potential benefit of a third more specific and sensitive assay, real-time quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR), with the objective of reducing the duration of the conventional 1-week study, we simultaneously assessed gene expression by qRT-PCR along with Western blots and enzyme activity assays as a time course in an in vivo model.