Membrane transporters can have clinically relevant effects on the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of a drug in various organs and tissues by controlling its absorption, distribution and elimination. Together with metabolizing enzymes, they can drive a drug’s pharmacological action, as well as a drug can modulate transporter expression or activity, hence the importance of evaluating transporter-mediated drug-drug interactions recommended by the FDA guidelines. Genomembrane have developed transiently expressing ready-to-use cells to study FDA approved transporters (TransiPort). I had described this product range and their unique features in a previous post. I would like to introduce in this one 2 newly released cells overexpressing OATP1A2 and OATP2B1 transporters.

Sekisui XenoTech now offers human liver tissue microarrays (TMA) and a microsomal pool for studying and developing new treatments for fatty liver disease (FLD). The microsomes and arrays feature non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and other liver tissue from the company’s Research Biobank . The initiative is part of Sekisui XenoTech’s ongoing commitment to furthering knowledge of hepatic diseases.

“Fatty liver disease is a highly pervasive condition that has a very significant impact on the health of modern society. We are supporting hepatology researchers with these collections of high-quality human tissues to advance basic knowledge of FLD and to develop new treatments for the illness,” explained Maciej Czerwinski, Ph.D., Sekisui XenoTech Director of Consulting who led the effort to establish the company’s research Biobank and develop the microarrays.

Isolation of Subcelluar Fractions for use in ADME studies – Sekisui Xenotech and tebu-bio

Over the years, Sekisui XenoTech has built up a strong expertise in preparing subcellular fractions for ADME applications.

There is a list of the fractions readily available for prompt delivery across Europe. However, the researcher’s specific needs in terms of species model, characterization or tissue for a particular metabolism study may not be met by the already available catalogue products. For this reason, the existing list is continuously expanding over the years in response to new demands.

Much experience has been gained by Sekisui Xenotech through interesting requests for custom tissue preparations from researchers. Here, I’d like to share some comments from the scientists at Xenotech involved in these preparations, to give you some insight in their customization capacities.

Recombinant CYPs are commonly used in ADME-Tox studies as in vitro tools, mostly for reaction phenotyping, enzyme inhibition screening, clearance and metabolite ID.

“Research has shown that rCYPs expressed in E. coli (Bactosomes) showed greater enzymatic activity compared with the equivalent enzymes expressed in insect cells (Supersomes). Similarly, most Bactosomes show greater turnover numbers when compared with the equivalent Supersomes. These results demonstrate that human rCYPs expressed in E. coli are frequently more active than the corresponding rCYPs expressed in insect cells» says Michael Voice from CYPEX.