Catalytic activities of a highly efficient cocaine hydrolase for hydrolysis of biologically active cocaine metabolites norcocaine and benzoylecgonine.

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Molecular Modeling and Biopharmaceutical Center, College of Pharmacy, University of Kentucky, 789 South Limestone Street, Lexington, KY, 40536, USA.

Published: January 2023

Cocaine is a widely abused, hepatotoxic drug without an FDA-approved pharmacotherapy specific for cocaine addiction or overdose. It is recognized as a promising therapeutic strategy to accelerate cocaine metabolism which can convert cocaine to pharmacologically inactive metabolite(s) using an efficient cocaine-metabolizing enzyme. Our previous studies have successfully designed and discovered a highly efficient cocaine hydrolase, denoted as CocH5-Fc(M6), capable of rapidly hydrolyzing cocaine at the benzoyl ester moiety. In the present study, we determined the kinetic parameters of CocH5-Fc(M6) against norcocaine (k = 9,210 min, K = 20.9 μM, and k/K = 1.87 × 10 min M) and benzoylecgonine (k = 158 min, K = 286 μM, and k/K = 5.5 × 10 min M) for the first time. Further in vivo studies have demonstrated that CocH5-Fc(M6) can effectively accelerate clearance of not only cocaine, but also norcocaine (known as a cocaine metabolite which is more toxic than cocaine itself) and benzoylecgonine (known as an unfavorable long-lasting metabolite with some long-term toxicity concerns) in rats. Due to the desired high catalytic activity against norcocaine, CocH5-Fc(M6) is capable of quickly detoxifying both cocaine and its more toxic metabolite norcocaine after intraperitoneally administering lethal dose of 60 or 180 mg/kg cocaine. In addition, the ability of CocH5-Fc(M6) to accelerate clearance of benzoylecgonine should also be valuable for the use of CocH5-Fc(M6) in treatment of cocaine use disorder.

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9837138PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-27280-xDOI Listing

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