Library of drug metabolizing enzymes: applications for metabolic prediction and biosynthesis of human drug metabolites

Drug metabolizing enzymes (DMEs) play a role in modifying drug activity and in modulating the clearance of target compounds such as endo- and xenobiotics, small molecule drugs, steroid hormones and dietary flavonoids. Thus, the evaluation of metabolites generated by DMEs is required for drug development, food science and environmental assessment. Here, we generated a library of DMEs expressed in yeast cells as a means of studying xenobiotic metabolism from early phase metabolic screening to structural determination and evaluation. In this review, advantages of the DME expression system are introduced as well as applications of the DME platform for studying drug metabolism.