procedures for the safety assessment of chemical compounds using recombinant yeast expressing human cytochrome p450

摘要

There is disclosed a method for evaluation of the safety of a chemical compound, which includes the steps of: (a) reacting a chemical compound with recombinant yeast cells expressing, or in other words producing, human cytochrome P450 molecular species P450 1A2, P450 2C9, P450 2E1 and P450 3A4 together with a yeast NADPH-P450 reductase, which may be in the form of a fused enzyme with each of said human cytochrome P450 molecular species, or with the cell free extracts of the yeast cells; and (b) analyzing the resulting metabolite to determine the safety of the compound. According to this method, it can be determined whether a test compound will be converted into a carcinogenic or mutagenic form through the metabolism in the human liver, and whether the test compound or its metabolite has mutagenicity.