Title: Progesterone diffusion through snake skin as a human model membrane

Authors: Carla Tagliaferri; Marianna Gallo; Vitale Stanzione; Roberto Nigro

Addresses: Department of Chemical Engineering, Università degli studi di Napoli Federico II, Facoltà di Ingegneria, Piazzale Tecchio, 80 Napoli, Italy. ' Department of Chemical Engineering, Università degli studi di Napoli Federico II, Facoltà di Ingegneria, Piazzale Tecchio, 80 Napoli, Italy. ' Department of Chemical Engineering, Università degli studi di Napoli Federico II, Facoltà di Ingegneria, Piazzale Tecchio, 80 Napoli, Italy. ' Department of Chemical Engineering, Università degli studi di Napoli Federico II, Facoltà di Ingegneria, Piazzale Tecchio, 80 Napoli, Italy

Abstract: Thanks to its physical and chemical structure, shed snake skin can be used as a model membrane for human skin in in vitro drug delivery experiments. The progesterone mass transfer through Bitis gabonica skin has been studied using a suitable diffusion glass cell. A lag time of 5.7 hours, representative the unsteady diffusion regime, has been observed. After this lag time, the system reaches the steady-state condition during which the diffusion coefficient and the partition coefficient of progesterone in the system have been calculated by the integration of Fick's laws.

Keywords: progesterone diffusion; snake skin; model membrane; diffusion coefficient; partition coefficient; human skin; in vitro drug delivery; progesterone mass transfer.

DOI: 10.1504/IJDE.2011.045133

International Journal of Design Engineering, 2011 Vol.4 No.2, pp.186 - 196

Published online: 30 Sep 2014 *

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