Soybean-derived steryl glucosides

Soybean-derived sterol mixture (SS), soybean-derived steryl glucosides (SG), and their individual components have been extensively studied for their ability to promote the nasal absorption of drugs, particularly insulin [79,80], Maitani et al. [79] demonstrated that the nasal administration of SG plus insulin to rabbits resulted in significant reductions in blood glucose. The effect of SG was dose dependent to 1%, with a plateau being reached thereafter. Muramatsu et al. [81] have demonstrated that SG perturbs the phospholipids in artificial membranes (i.e., liposomes). Furthermore, circular dichroism studies with insulin in the presence or absence of SG have indicated that the enhancer had little effect on the dissociation of insulin hexamers to monomers. These results suggest that the action of SS and SG involves interaction with the nasal membrane rather than interaction with insulin molecules. 

---