Development of intestinal cell culture models for drug transport and metabolism studies

Cell culture models offer many advantageous features for the analysis of drug transport and drug metabolism. From a basic research perspective, these systems offer the potential for manipulating the environment or cellular properties as a means to address mechanistic questions. From a drug discovery perspective, cell culture models can be used to expedite identification of compounds with favorable pharmacokinetic properties, and to evaluate structure-absorption/metabolism relationships. In this review, we will use the intestinal epithelium as an example for discussing issues associated with the development of new cell culture models for evaluating drug metabolism. Specifically, we will discuss biological properties of the intestinal epithelium and address biological and practical consideration in the application of tumor cell lines, short-term primary cultures, stem-like cell cultures, and oncogene immortalized cells as approaches to establishing models for the intestinal epithelium.