Transport processes similarity

One of the major obstacles to definitively examining the role of formulation components on enterocyte-based processes is the possible effect of excipient inclusion on other complicating factors. For example, the inclusion of lipids or surfactants in in vitro metabolic or transport screens runs the risk of affecting the thermodynamic activity of the drug in solution, thereby obscuring the role of metabolic and transport processes. Similarly, some surfactants and lipid-surfactant conjugates may cause transient increases in intestinal permeability as... 

The kidneys receive a large blood flow (approximately a quarter of the total cardiac output of 5 litres per minute) and from this volume of blood approximately 170 litres of filtrate are produced every day Clearly, the body would quickly become dehydrated if this volume of fluid were lost to the sewage system, so most of it is reabsorbed from the kidney tubule and returned to the bloodstream. Small molecules that are dissolved in the glomerular filtrate are also reabsorbed back into the bloodstream, either by passive diffusion (which obeys Fick s law) or by the utilisation of energy in an active transport process similar to the mechanisms for gut absorption discussed previously. It should be realised that reabsorption from the glomerular filtrate and return to the bloodstream are involved in the duration of action of many drugs, and a drug molecule may be filtered and reabsorbed many times before it is finally excreted from the body. 

Analyte removal For analyte removal to be successful, the applied extraction conditions must be strong enough to overcome analyte/matrix interactions such as adsorption of analytes on active surfaces, and speed up transport processes of analytes within the matrix. Often an increase in temperature or addition of a modifier significantly improves these processes. Analyte transport may be normal diffusion of the solute or may involve diffusion of the analyte through the fluid along pores in the matrix. Adsorption and desorption may take place during transport, but often the precise process will not be known even though a transport process similar to diffusion occurs. 

Following the general trend of looldng for a molecular description of the properties of matter, self-diffusion in liquids has become a key quantity for interpretation and modeling of transport in liquids [5]. Self-diffusion coefficients can be combined with other data, such as viscosities, electrical conductivities, densities, etc., in order to evaluate and improve solvodynamic models such as the Stokes-Einstein type [6-9]. From temperature-dependent measurements, activation energies can be calculated by the Arrhenius or the Vogel-Tamman-Fulcher equation (VTF), in order to evaluate models that treat the diffusion process similarly to diffusion in the solid state with jump or hole models [1, 2, 7]. 

The absorption and transport processes of many of the phytochemicals present in food are complex and not fully understood, and prediction of their bioavailability is problematic. This is particularly true of the lipid-soluble phytochemicals. In this chapter the measurement of carotenoid bioavailability will be discussed. The carotenoids serve as an excellent example of where too little understanding of food structure, the complexity of their behaviour in foods and human tissues, and the nature and cause of widely different individual response to similar intakes, can lead to misinterpretation of study results and confusion in our understanding of the relevance of these (and other) compounds to human health. 

Requirements regarding laboratory liquid-liquid reactors are very similar to those for gas-liquid reactors. To interpret laboratory data properly, knowledge of the interfacial area, mass-transfer coefficients, effect of contaminants on mass-transport processes, ionic characteristics of the system, etc. is needed. Commonly used liquid-liquid reactors have been discussed by Doraiswamy and Sharma (1984). 

There seems to be an opportunity to extend the electrochemical process to direct membrane transport that is, with electrodes plated on either side of a facilitated-transport membrane similar to that of Johnson [24]. The shuttling action of the carrier (Fig. 9) could then be brought about by electrochemical reduction and oxidation instead of pressure difference. 

The enthusiasm for using Caco-2 cells and other epithelial cell cultures in studies of drug transport processes has been explained by the ease with which new information can be derived from these fairly simple in vitro models [7]. For instance, drug transport studies in Caco-2 cells grown on permeable supports are easy to perform under controlled conditions. This makes it possible to extract information about specific transport processes that would be difficult to obtain in more complex models such as those based on whole tissues from experimental animals. Much of our knowledge about active and passive transport mechanisms in epithelia has therefore been obtained from Caco-2 cells and other epithelial cell cultures [10-15]. This has been possible since Caco-2 cells are unusually well differentiated. In many respects they are therefore functionally similar to the human small intestinal enterocyte, despite the fact that they originate from a human colorectal carcinoma [16, 17]. 

For weak acids, e.g., salicylic acid, the dependency on a pH gradient becomes complex since both the passive diffusion and the active transport process will be dependent on the proton concentration in the apical solution [61, 63, 98, 105] and a lowering of the pH from 7.4 to 6.5 will increase the apical to basolateral transport more than 20-fold. Similarly, for weak bases such as alfentanil or cimetidine, a lowering of the pH to 6.5 will decrease the passive transport towards the basolateral side [105]. The transport of the ionizable compound will, due to the pH partition hypothesis, follow the pKa curve. 

The first row describes the condition if 1000 kg/h is emitted into the air. The result is similar to the Level II calculation with 19700 kg in air, 57 kg in water, 24 kg in soil and only 0.2 kg in sediment. It can be concluded that benzene discharged to the atmosphere has very little potential to enter other media. The rates of transfer from air to water and air to soil are both only about 0.4 kg/h. Even if the transfer coefficients were increased by a factor of 10, the rates would remain negligible. The reason for this is the value of the mass transfer coefficients which control this transport process. The overall residence time is 19.8 hours, similar to Level II. 

A process similar to endocytosis occurs in the reverse direction when it is known as exocytosis (Figure 5.11). Membrane-bound vesicles in the cytosol fuse with the plasma membrane and release their contents to the outside of the cell. Both endocytosis and exocytosis are manifestations of the widespread phenomenon of vesicular transport, which not only ferries materials in and out of cells but also between organelles, e.g. from the endoplasmic reticulum to the Golgi and then to the lysosomes or to the plasma membrane for secretion (Chapter 1). Many hormones are also secreted in this way, as are neurotransmitters from one nerve into a synaptic junction that joins two nerves (Chapters 12 and 14). 

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