For local treatment of ulcerative colitis, a new azoreductase driven prodrug CDDO-AZO from bardoxolone methyl (CDDO-Me) and 5-aminosalicylate (5-ASA) was designed, synthesized and biologically evaluated. It is proposed that orally administrated CDDO-AZO is stable before reaching the colon, while it can also be triggered by the presence of azoreductase in the colon to fragment into CDDO-Me and 5-ASA, generating potent anti-colitis effects. Superior to olsalazine (OLS, a clinically used drug for ulcerative colitis) and CDDO-Me plus 5-ASA, CDDO-AZO significantly attenuated inflammatory colitis symptoms in DSS-induced chronic colitis mice, which suggested that CDDO-AZO may be a promising anti-ulcerative colitis agent.

The 1,125-bp mabB gene encoding 5-aminosalicylate (5ASA) 1,2-dioxygenase, a nonheme iron dioxygenase in the bicupin family that catalyzes the cleavage of the 5ASA aromatic ring to form cis-4-amino-6-carboxy-2-oxohexa-3,5-dienoate in the biodegradation of 3-aminobenzoate, was cloned from Comamonas sp. strain QT12 and characterized. The deduced amino acid sequence of the enzyme has low sequence identity with that of other reported ring-cleaving dioxygenases. MabB was heterologously expressed in Escherichia coli cells and purified as a His-tagged enzyme. The optimum pH and temperature for MabB are 8.0 and 10°C, respectively. FeII is required for the catalytic activity of the purified enzyme. The apparent Km and Vmax values of MabB for 5ASA are 52.0 ± 5.6 μM and 850 ± 33.2 U/mg, respectively. The two oxygen atoms incorporated into the product of the MabB-catalyzed reaction are both from the dioxygen molecule. Both 5ASA and gentisate could be converted by MabB; however, the catalytic efficiency of MabB for 5ASA was much higher (∼70-fold) than that for gentisate. The mabB-disrupted mutant lost the ability to grow on 3-aminobenzoate, and mabB expression was higher when strain QT12 was cultivated in the presence of 3-aminobenzoate. Thus, 5ASA is the physiological substrate of MabB.IMPORTANCE For several decades, 5-aminosalicylate (5ASA) has been advocated as the drug mesalazine to treat human inflammatory bowel disease and considered the key intermediate in the xenobiotic degradation of many aromatic organic pollutants. 5ASA biotransformation research will help us elucidate the microbial degradation of these pollutants. Most studies have reported that gentisate 1,2-dioxygenases (GDOs) can convert 5ASA with significantly high activity; however, the catalytic efficiency of these enzymes for gentisate is much higher than that for 5ASA. This study showed that MabB can convert 5ASA to cis-4-amino-6-carboxy-2-oxohexa-3,5-dienoate, incorporating two oxygen atoms from the dioxygen molecule into the product. Unlike GDOs, MabB uses 5ASA instead of gentisate as the primary substrate. mabB is the first reported 5-aminosalicylate 1,2-dioxygenase gene.