Febuxostat, a drug recently approved in the US, European Union and Japan for treatment of gout, inhibits xanthine oxidoreductase (XOR)-mediated generation of uric acid during purine catabolism. It inhibits bovine milk XOR with a K(i) in the picomolar-order, but we found that it is a much weaker inhibitor of Rhodobacter capsulatus XOR, even though the substrate-binding pockets of mammalian and b...
