Types of Recombinant Drugs

Individual drug metabolizing enzymes DMEs) like CYPs, FMOs, and UGTs are now routinely expressed, usually in insect cells using a baculovirus. Ultracentrifugation provides vesicles called microsomes, which contain these membrane-bound DMEs. One popular type of recombinant CYP preparation called Supersomes comes with CYP reductase, a necessary cofactor, co-expressed. Not only individual CYPs (2B6, 3A4, etc.) but also allelic variants like CYP2C9 2 are available for the study of possible pharmacogenomic effects on metabolism. 

Previously, pharmacologists were constrained to the prewired sensitivity of isolated tissues for agonist study. As discussed in Chapter 2, different tissues possess different densities of receptor, different receptor co-proteins in the membranes, and different efficiencies of stimulus-response mechanisms. Judicious choice of tissue type could yield uniquely useful pharmacologic systems (i.e., sensitive screening tissues). However, before the availability of recombinant systems these choices were limited. With the ability to express different densities of human target proteins such as receptors has come a transformation in drug discovery. Recombinant cellular systems can now... 

Anemia. Testosterone and similar compounds are potent stimulators of erythropoietin synthesis from the kidneys and other tissues.109 Erythropoietin, in turn, stimulates production of red blood cell synthesis in bone marrow. Human erythropoietin, however, can now be synthesized using recombinant DNA techniques. Hence, various types of anemia that occur secondary to renal disease, cancer chemotherapy, and so forth are usually treated directly with recombinant erythropoietin.109 Nonetheless, androgens may be used as an adjunct to erythropoietin and other drugs to stimulate red blood cell production in certain patients with severe or recalcitrant anemia.10... 

---