Modeling of percutaneous drug transport in vitro using skin-imitating Carbosil membrane.

A comparative study of the barrier function of human skin and polydimethylsiloxane-polycarbonate block copolymer Carbosil membrane was performed in vitro using 14 drugs spanning a wide range of structures and therapeutic classes. The drug permeability coefficients across the skin and the Carbosil membrane wee examined as an explicit dependence of permeant molecular weight, melting point, solubility in aqueous solution in aqueous solution and octanol-water partition coefficient. Owing to heterophase and heteropolar structure, Carbosil membranes and human skin epidermis share a common solubility-diffusion mechanism of drug transport. This synthetic membrane is shown to provide a mechanistically substantiated model for percutaneous drug absorption. Carbosil membrane can be used both foe quantitative prediction for transdermal drug delivery rate and as a skin-imitating standard membrane in the course of in vitro drug delivery kinetics evaluation.