Interactions of acidic pharmaceuticals with human serum albumin: insights into the molecular toxicity of emerging pollutants

Acidic pharmaceuticals such as diclofenac (DCF), clofibric acid (CA) and ketoprofen (KTP) have been detected frequently in environmental media. In order to reveal the toxicity of such emerging pollutants, their interactions with human serum albumin (HSA) were investigated by capillary electrophoresis, molecular spectrometry, and equilibrium dialysis. The binding constants and sites of these acidic pharmaceuticals with HSA were obtained. The thermodynamic parameters, e.g. enthalpy change and entropy change of these interactions were calculated to characterize that all the reactions resulted from hydrophobic and electrostatic interactions. The static quenching of the fluorescence of HSA was observed when interacted with acidic pharmaceuticals, indicating acidic pharmaceuticals bound to Tryptophan residue of HSA. The 3D fluorescence and circular dichroism confirmed that the secondary conformation of HSA changed after the interactions with the pharmaceuticals. At physiological condition, only 0.12 mM acidic pharmaceuticals reduced the binding of vitamin B-2 to HSA by 37, 30 and 21% for DCF, KTP and CA, respectively. This work provides an insight into non-covalent interactions between emerging contaminants and biomolecule, and is helpful for clarifying the toxic mechanism of such emerging contaminants.