What are SUPERSOMES™ ?
SUPERSOMES™ are microsomes derived from baculovirus infected insect cells. The baculoviruses used to infect the insect cells have been engineered to express one or more drug metabolizing enzyme cDNAs. SUPERSOMES™ catalyze the same enzymatic reactions with (similar Km values) as lymphoblast-expressed or human liver microsome enzymes. SUPERSOMES™ usually contain much higher enzyme activity than other microsome sources. For example, SUPERSOMES™ contain 5-15X the P450 activity of our current lymphoblast-expressed microsomes. SUPERSOMES™ microsome products are very useful for in vitro metabolic studies. The high enzymatic activities of SUPERSOMES™ make studies of metabolic turnover easier, especially for those substrates which are turned over slowly. As is the case with all cDNA expression systems, in vitro studies requiring a quantitative comparison of cDNA expressed microsomes to human liver samples must be based on the cytochrome P450 quantity and activity in each microsome source. (“Use
