Drug partitioning, standard system

The use of a single standard system for drug partitioning is justified by the Collander equation (eq. 20) [183], which relates partition coefficients from different solvent systems. 

Several hundreds of linear relationships between various kinds of (mostly nonspecific) biological data and n-octanol/water partition coefficients have been published e.g. [18, 182]). However, the choice of n-octanol/water as the standard system for drug partitioning must be reconsidered in the light of some recent results. Principal component analysis of partition coefficients from different solvent systems [188 —190] shows that lipophilicity depends on solute bulk, polar, and hydrogen-bonding effects [189] isotropic surface areas, i.e. areas where no water molecules bind and hydrated surface areas, were correlated with the first and the second principal components of such an analysis [190]. 

Bouchard, G., Galland, A., Garrupt, P. A., Gulaboski, R., Mirceski, V., Scholz, F., Girault, H. H. Standard partition coefficients of anionic drugs in the n-octanol/water system determined by voltammetry at three-phase electrodes. Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2003, 5, 3748-3751. 

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