Interactions of aminoglycoside antibiotics with negatively charged lipid layers. Biochemical and conformational studies.

Previous studies [Laurent et al., Biochem. Pharmac. 31, 3861 (1982)] have demonstrated that aminoglycoside antibiotics bind to negatively charged phospholipid bilayers and inhibit the activity of lysosomal phospholipases. This inhibition also occurs in vivo in animal and man. It is considered to be an early and significant step in the development of aminoglycoside-induced nephrotoxicity. The binding of 6 aminoglycosides in current clinical use (dibekacin, gentamicin, tobramycin, kanamycin A, amikacin and streptomycin) to phosphatidylinositol has been studied by gel filtration technique and by conformational analysis. Variation of the phosphatidylinositol content from 0 to 27% of total phospholipids causes a cooperative increase in aminoglycoside binding. At fixed phosphatidylinositol concentration, the binding of the different aminoglycosides is related to the number of aminogroups carried by the drug (viz., gentamicin greater than kanamycin A greater than streptomycin) and is largely, but not entirely dependent upon electrostatic interactions. Conformational analysis of the interaction of aminoglycosides with phosphatidylinositol monolayers was made by a step-wise computation approach. We first have taken into account the Vander Waals, torsional and electrostatic energies and we have calculated the hydrophobic and hydrophilic centers of each molecule. Assembly was then computed by successive association of one molecule of drug and up to 4 molecules of phosphatidylinositol. The calculated interaction energies varied from -8.5 kcal/mol (gentamicin) to -4.9 kcal/mol (amikacin) and -3.9 kcal/mol (streptomycin).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)