Emerging Metabolic Profiles of Sulfonamide Antibiotics by Cytochromes P450: A Computational–Experimental Synergy Study on Emerging Pollutants

Metabolism, especially by CYP450 enzymes, is the main reason for mediating the toxification and detoxification of xenobiotics in humans, while some uncommon metabolic pathways, especially for emerging pollutants, probably causing idiosyncratic toxicity are easily overlooked. The pollution of sulfonamide antibiotics in aqueous system has attracted increasing public attention. Hydroxylation of the central amine group can trigger a series of metabolic processes of sulfonamide antibiotics in humans; however, this work parallelly reported the coupling and fragmenting initiated by amino H-abstraction of sulfamethoxazole (SMX) catalyzed by human CYP450 enzymes. Elucidation of the emerging metabolic profiles was mapped via a multistep synergy between computations and experiments, involving preliminary DFT computations and in vitro and in vivo assays, profiling adverse effects, and rationalizing the fundamental factors via targeted computations. Especially, the confirmed SMX dimer was shown to potentially act as a metabolism disruptor in humans, while spin aromatic delocalization resulting in the low electron donor ability of amino radicals was revealed as the fundamental factor to enable coupling of sulfonamide antibiotics by CYP450 through the nonconventional nonrebound pathway. This work may further strengthen the synergistic use of computations prior to experiments to avoid wasteful experimental screening efforts in environmental chemistry and toxicology.