Relation between the ability of some compounds to modulate the MRP1-mediated efflux of glutathione and to inhibit the MRPl-mediated efflux of daunorubicin.

Much effort has been recently directed to identify the transport-modulating agents in order to overcome the P-gp- and MRP1-mediated drug resistance. Contrary to what is observed for P-gp, very few compounds have been shown to reverse multi-drug resistance (MDR) mediated by MRP1. On the other hand, despite of critical role of GSH in transporting the MRP1 substrates, not much is known about GSH interactions with MRP1. In this work, three compounds that were shown to inhibit the MRP1-mediated efflux of daunorubicin (DNR) have been studied. Depending on their nature the selected compounds have different effects, e.g. at 40 microM, verapamil inhibits 50% of DNR efflux whereas GSH efflux is increased about two-fold. PAK-104P has shown the same effect, i.e. the inhibition of the MRP1-mediated efflux of DNR is accompanied by a stimulation of GSH efflux. However, the PAK-104P concentration required to obtain the same effect is about 40 times smaller that in the case of verapamil. MK571 has been shown to inhibit the efflux of both DNR and GSH. Based on these observations and those reported earlier, a working model is proposed.