Acquisition and use of human in vitro liver preparations.

Human in vitro liver preparations-i.e., slices, hepatocyte suspensions, primary hepatocyte cultures and microsomes-are increasingly used in the drug development process. The main applications are prediction of drug metabolite profiles, drug-drug interactions and toxicity. The use of these in vitro models is limited, however, because of their erratic availability, the absence of validated protocols and the difficulties of extrapolation of in vitro data to the in vivo situation.