Transcellular drug transport carrier-mediated processes

This refers to the transport across the epithelial cells, which can occur by passive diffusion, carrier-mediated transport, and/or endocytic processes (e.g., transcytosis). Traditionally, the transcellular route of nasal mucosa has been simply viewed as primarily crossing the lipoidal barrier, in which the absorption of a drug is determined by the magnitude of its partition coefficient and molecular size. However, several investigators have reported the lack of linear correlation between penetrant lipophilicity and permeability [9], which implies that cell membranes of nasal epithelium cannot be regarded as a simple lipoidal barrier. Recently, compounds whose transport could not be fully explained by passive simple diffusion have been investigated to test if they could be utilized as specific substrates for various transporters which have been identified in the... 

Both processes exhibit classical saturation kinetics, since there are only a finite number of carrier molecules. Thus unlike passive absorption (paracellular or transcellular), where the rate of transport is directly proportional to the drug concentration (Figure 1.5, A), carrier-mediated transport is only proportional to the drag concentration at low concentrations of drug. At higher concentrations, the carrier mechanism becomes saturated and the rate of absorption remains constant (Figure 1.5, B). 

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