An enzyme inducer is a type of
drug
A drug is any chemical substance other than a nutrient or an essential dietary ingredient, which, when administered to a living organism, produces a biological effect. Consumption of drugs can be via insufflation (medicine), inhalation, drug i ...
that increases the
metabolic
Metabolism (, from ''metabolē'', "change") is the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions in organisms. The three main functions of metabolism are: the conversion of the energy in food to energy available to run cellular processes; the ...
activity of an enzyme either by
binding to the
enzyme
An enzyme () is a protein that acts as a biological catalyst by accelerating chemical reactions. The molecules upon which enzymes may act are called substrate (chemistry), substrates, and the enzyme converts the substrates into different mol ...
and activating it, or by increasing the expression of the gene coding for the enzyme. One of the examples of enzyme inducers can be Cytochrome P450 enzymes, which will help to metabolize the drugs faster in the organism. Enzyme inducers are important in the pharmaceutical field to learn drug interactions. Studies shown that certain drugs will increase the activity of the inducer, examples could be antibiotics. It is the opposite of an
enzyme repressor. There are specific types of enzyme inducers
that create cytoprotective pathways that play a role in prevention and treatment of cancer and other diseases including cardiovascular disease and neurodegenerative diseases. Enzyme inducers can be either naturally occurring or synthetically made.These inducers can be naturally occurring, like compounds in cruciferous vegetables, or synthetically developed for therapeutic purposes.
See also
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Enzyme activator
Enzyme activators are molecules that bind to enzymes and increase their activity. They are the opposite of enzyme inhibitors. These molecules are often involved in the allosteric regulation of enzymes in the control of metabolism
Metaboli ...
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Enzyme inhibitor
An enzyme inhibitor is a molecule that binds to an enzyme and blocks its Enzyme activity, activity. Enzymes are proteins that speed up chemical reactions necessary for life, in which Substrate (biochemistry), substrate molecules are converted ...
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Regulation of gene expression
Regulation of gene expression, or gene regulation, includes a wide range of mechanisms that are used by cells to increase or decrease the production of specific gene products (protein or RNA). Sophisticated programs of gene expression are wide ...
References
External links
Hepatic enzyme inducersHepatic enzyme inhibitors
Medicinal chemistry
Enzymes
Metabolism
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