Ibuprofen biotransformation

The most important removal pathways of PhACs during wastewater treatment are biotransformation/biodegradation and abiotic removal by adsorption to the sludge. The efficiency of their removal at WWTP depends on their physico-chemical properties, especially hydrophobicity and biodegradability, and process operating parameters (i.e., HRT, SRT, and temperature). For certain NSAIDs (e.g., ibuprofen, acetaminophen), high removals (>90%) are consistently reported in literature... 

Some biotransformations introduce an asymmetric center into a drug and these often proceed stereospeci-fically. The most common examples are hydroxylation of a secondary carbon and the reduction of ketones to secondary alcohols. Ibuprofen undergoes both co and co-l oxidation of the isobutyl side chain, and formation of the resulting carboxylic acid metabolite introduces a second asymmetric center into the molecule. Both ibuprofen enantiomers have been shown to undergo stereospecific oxidation to give a metabolite with the same configuration at the new asymmetric center. 

Because of biotransformations after the drug is administered, it sometimes makes little difference whether a racemic mixture or one isomer is administered. The popular nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) ibuprofen is sold as... 

Another, commonly known example of stereoselective drug biotransformation is in vitro and in vivo conversion of inactive ( )-(—)-ibuprofen to the active (5)-(-l-)-enantiomer in drug formulations containing ibuprofen racemate [30-32]. 

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