Serum albumin, bovine costs

In order to obtain a thermodynamically stable micro emulsion, the analysis of the phase behaviour is indispensable. With bovine serum albumin instead of an enzyme (because of the cost of the bio-catalyst) phase behaviour studies are shown in Fig. 2. A strong shift of the phase boundary is observed, yielding a system that solubilises much less water in the presence of the protein. In case of hydrophobic enzymes, the addition of dry lyophilised protein to an already prepared reverse micellar solution can also work well [53]. 

Chiral mobile phase additives provide a more versatile and cost-effective approach for enantiomer separations in thin-layer chromatography. Typically, chemically bonded layers with cyclodextrin and its derivatives, bovine serum albumin, or macrocyclic glycopeptides are used as chiral additives in the reversed-phase mode [59,60,172-178]. For [5- and y-cyclodextrins and their derivatives, a 0.1 to 0.5 M aqueous methanol or acetonitrile solution of the chiral selector is used as the mobile phase. Bovine serum albumin is generally used at concentrations of 1-8 % (w/v) in an aqueous acetate buffer of pH 5 to 7 or in a 0.5 M acetic acid solution, in either case with from 3-40 % (v/v) propan-2-ol (or another aliphatic alcohol), added to control retention. Enantioselectivity usually increases with an increase in concentration of the chiral selector, and may be non existent at low concentrations of the chiral selector. 

Due to the high cost of cell culture, Caco-2 assays are usually used as a follow-up to PAMPA in ADME screening [78], and as a result, the sample burden for bioanalysis is not as heavy as for some first-hne assays, such as metabolic stability. There have been a number of reports in the literature that use automated optimization and single LC-MS/MS for sample analysis for Caco-2 assay support [46,79-81]. Nevertheless, Caco-2 samples pose a unique bioanalytical challenge. Unlike plasma or microsomal samples rich in proteins that help solubilize compounds and prevent adsorptive loss, Caco-2 samples are essentially aqueous buffer samples with very little protein. As a result, compounds with low solubility and/ or adsorption problems tend to exhibit poor recoveries in the assay due to precipitation and adsorptive losses [82,83]. An effective solution to this problem is the use of organic solvent to catch compounds immediately after incubation, but prior to analysis, in order to maintain solubility and prevent adsorptive loss to container surfaces. Another approach involves the addition of some protein such as bovine serum albumin (BSA) to the assay buffer system, thus reducing compound loss/ precipitation and improving recoveries [84]. 

It is clearly recognized that analytes in aqueous solution do not perform in the same way as analytes in a biological matrix it is therefore necessary to use, e.g., serum as diluent. Owing to the cost, and more recently health hazards, nonhuman, usually bovine, serum may be used. This can cause problems for some analytes, e.g., albumin. 

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