Cytochrome P450 2D6 (CYP2D6) is one of the most widely investigated CYPs related to genetic polymorphisms and is responsible for one-quarter of the currently used clinical drugs. We previously detected 22 novel, non-synonymous, mutated sites in the Chinese population, but nothing is known about the functional effects of these mutations in terms of specific CYP2D6 substrates. In this study, wild-type CYP2D6, two common allelic variants and 22 newly reported CYP2D6 isoforms were transiently expressed in 293FT cells, and the enzymatic activities of these variants were systematically assessed using dextromethorphan and bufuralol as the probing substrates. Consequently, 19 and 21 allelic variants were found to exhibit significantly decreased enzymatic activities for dextromethorphan and bufuralol, respectively. Of 22 novel CYP2D6 variants, six allelic isoforms (CYP2D6.89, CYP2D6.92, CYP2D6.93, CYP2D6.96, E215K and R440C) exhibited absent or extremely reduced metabolic activities compared with those observed for the wild-type enzyme. Our in vitro functional data can be useful for CYP2D6 phenotype prediction and provide valuable information for the study of clinical impact of these newly found CYP2D6 variants in China.As one of the most important drug-metabolizing enzymes, cytochrome P450 2D6 (CYP2D6) is responsible for approximately 25% of clinically used drugs including analgesics, antiarrhythmics, antiemetics, antipsychotics, antidepressants, beta-adrenergic blockers and chemotherapeutic/hormone replacement agents [1][2][3]. Similar to other P450 subfamily members, the CYP2D6 gene locus is also highly polymorphic across different ethnic populations and individuals [4]. To date, a total of 105 allelic variants are defined and described in the Human CYP Allele Nomenclature database (http://www.cypalleles.ki.se/cyp2d6.htm). These genetic variants can be associated with increased, decreased or abolished enzymatic functions, which results in differences of up to 30-to 40-fold changes in substrate drug clearance values. Consequently, these differences in CYP2D6 activity have been demonstrated to be prominent contributors to interindividual drug response variability [2,5,6].It has been reported that significant ethnic and geographic differences exist in CYP2D6 alleles [7,8]. For Eastern Asians, only 1-2% of individuals have been found to be poor metabolizers (PMs), and approximately 57% of the Chinese population are intermediate metabolizers (IMs) [9,10]. Polymorphic studies have revealed that the IM allele CYP2D6*10 is predominant in Asian populations with frequencies ranging from 30% to 50% [7,11]. In a recent large-scale, genetic screening study, we sequenced all nine exons of the CYP2D6 gene in 2129 unrelated Chinese individuals. As a result, 22 new nonsynonymous, mutated sites were found, and 12 of them were designated as novel alleles (*87-*93, *94A, *94B and *95-*98) by the Human CYP Allele Nomenclature Committee [12]. Considering the fact that there are more than 1.4 billion people living in the mainland ...