Evaluation of surfactants as solubilizing agents in microsomal metabolism reactions with lipophilic substrates.

Solubilizing agents are routinely added when investigating the biotransformation of lipophilic substrates using hepatic microsomes. For highly lipophilic compounds, the concentration of solvent or surfactant necessary for dissolution can be detrimental to enzyme activity. This study evaluates the effect of 12 surfactants on microsomal metabolism and the ability of the same surfactants to improve the aqueous solubility of the pentabrominated diphenyl ether BDE-100, a lipophilic environmental contaminant previously found to be recalcitrant to in vitro metabolism.