Surrogate cells

With the advent of molecular biology and the ability to express transfected genes (through transfection with cDNA) into surrogate cells to create functional recombinant systems has come a revolution in pharmacology. 

Bangham, A. D., Surrogate cells or Trojan horses, BioEssays 1081-1088 (1995). 

Reductionist systems most often are recombinant ones with the target of interest (for example, human GPCR) expressed in a surrogate cell. The nature of the cell is thought to be immaterial since the cell is simply a unit reporting activation of the target of interest. For example, belief that peptic ulcer healing is facilitated by blockade of... 

NoV are readily transferred from hands to fomites and vice versa (Bidawid et al., 2004 D Souza et al., 2006). The pronoimced environmental stability of NoV particles also contributes to the spread of outbreaks from point sources of surface contamination. All stability studies have made use of surrogate organisms to model NoV response to conditions, since the human virus is not easily grown in cell culture (Duizer et al., 2004b Straub et al., 2007). The murine norovirus (MNV) and the feline calicivirus (FCV) have both been used, with the mouse virus providing more... 

The use of Caco-2 cell monolayers has gained in popularity as an in vivo human absorption surrogate moreover, the monolayers are generally accepted as a primary absorption screening tool by several pharmaceutical companies [10]. However, Caco-2 cell permeability measurements exhibit certain limitations due to the mechanisms involved. Both passive and active pathways exist active transport tends to increase the absorption across the cells and, since Caco-2 cells overexpress the P-glycoprotein (P-gp) efflux pump, the absorption of some compounds across these cells may be underestimated. 

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