A method for rapidly predicting drug tissue distribution using surfactant vesicle electrokinetic chromatography

Lung tissue distribution of an inhaled drug is important for its potency in the airways and with minimum systemic effects within its dose range. As the lung has the smallest diffusion distance of all the organs in the body and negligible diffusion delays, the characteristics of drug distribution in the lung will mainly depend on drug binding to both tissue and plasma protein. This research aims to develop and evaluate surfactant vesicle electrokinetic chromatography (SEKC) methods for high throughput profile prediction of tissue distribution for inhaled drugs. Several electrokinetic chromatography methods reported in the literature, as well as immobilised artificial membrane chromatography, were compared and evaluated in respect to chromatographic characteristics and statistical correlations. Among these methods, the docusate sodium salt (AOT) SEKC system showed good reproducibility, short run time, and the highest selectivity for alkylphenone test compounds. It also showed a significant statistical correlation between the retention of inhaled drugs and their in vivo volume of distribution at steady-state (V(ss)) in whole human body neglecting the plasma protein-binding differences. Stronger correlations were observed between the AOT SEKC retention of a series of basic drugs and their rat lung tissue-to-plasma water partitioning coefficient (K(pu)), which is affected only by drug binding to the tissue constituent. Further, on comparing correlations between AOT SEKC retention and K(pu) at various rat tissues, it was observed that the strongest correlation was with lung tissue distribution, while the weakest was with brain tissue distribution.     

Ultrasound-assisted synthesis of C-glycosides

A significant rate enhancement was observed in the preparation of allyl and allenyl-C-glycosides from glycosyl acetate or methyl O-glycoside precursors when ultrasound irradiation was employed as an energy source. The C-glycosides were obtained in 77-96% yields in <20 min using TMSOTf as promoter. These results show that sonication provides rapid and efficient access to useful C-glycoside-based building blocks.     

Polymer-supported thiobenzophenone: a self-indicating traceless ‘catch and release’ linker for the synthesis of isothiocyanates

The use of a thiobenzophenone as a self-indicating linker in the polymer-supported synthesis of isothiocyanates via a traceless ‘catch and release’ strategy is reported. Isothiocyanates were furnished via 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition of nitrile oxides with the polymer-supported thiobenzophenone linker, followed by Lewis acid-assisted fragmentation of the resulting polymer-supported oxathiazole.     

A convenient preparation of 3-methyl-3,4-dihydro-2(1H)-quinazolinone

3-Methyl-3,4-dihydro-2(1H)-quinazolinone ( 5 ) can be prepared in good yield and quality from o-nitrobenzyl chloride ( 1 ). The three-step sequence requires no purification of intermediates or final product.     

Computational evaluation of mass filter acceptance and transmittance influenced by developing fields: An application of the plane method to investigate prefilter efficacy for rectangular wave operated mass filters

The acceptance of quadrupole mass filters is improved when the alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC) fields are developed separately. Physically, this is achieved when a short RF only quadrupole (prefilter) is situated directly ahead of the mass filter. The acceptance gained by a system operating with a prefilter can be observed as an increase in sensitivity over conventional operation. Frequency dynamic duty cycle based rectangular waveform driven (rectangular wave) mass filters, a recent development, currently do not operate with prefilters. Little is known about the influence of duty cycle changes on the acceptance of rectangular wave mass filters. The sensitivity gain seen by conventional systems operating with prefilters indicates that the sensitivity of duty cycle based rectangular wave systems should increase comparably. The objective of this work was to determine prefilter efficacy for nonspecific rectangular wave mass filter systems. In this work, the plane method of acceptance was used to model the change to the acceptance and transmittance of sine and rectangular waveform driven mass filters under different modes of field development. Both systems indicated a fourfold increase in sensitivity when the mass filtering DC or duty cycle was delayed.     

A Gibbs free energy correlation for automated docking of carbohydrates

Thermodynamic information can be inferred from static atomic configurations. To model the thermodynamics of carbohydrate binding to proteins accurately, a large binding data set has been assembled from the literature. The data set contains information from 262 unique protein-carbohydrate crystal structures for which experimental binding information is known. Hydrogen atoms were added to the structures and training conformations were generated with the automated docking program AutoDock 3.06, resulting in a training set of 225,920 all-atom conformations. In all, 288 formulations of the AutoDock 3.0 free energy model were trained against the data set, testing each of four alternate methods of computing the van der Waals, solvation, and hydrogen-bonding energetic components. The van der Waals parameters from AutoDock 1 produced the lowest errors, and an entropic model derived from statistical mechanics produced the only models with five physically and statistically significant coefficients. Eight models predict the Gibbs free energy of binding with an error of less than 40% of the error of any similar models previously published.     

Finite-amplitude effects on ultrasound beam patterns in attenuating media

Some problems relevant to medical ultrasonics are addressed through experimental measurements of focused, pure-tone beam patterns under quasilinear conditions where significant nonlinearities are manifested. First, measurements in water provide a comparison of the beam patterns of the fundamental and nonlinearly generated harmonics against recent theoretical predictions of others. The radial beamwidths, presence and spacing of sidelobes, axial distances to peak pressures, focal shock parameter, time-domain waveform asymmetry, and post-focal falloff of the fundamental through fifth harmonics are discussed relative to various models under preshock conditions (sigma less than 1). Second, the focused sources are placed in a more attenuating fluid to mimic the behavior of these fields in tissue. The changes in beam characteristics are examined relative to measurements at the same intensities in water, and relative to theoretical predictions. The results suggest that, given a known linear (low-intensity) focused beam pattern in water, guidelines can be followed to predict the beam pattern of the fundamental and higher harmonics at higher intensities in water, and then in attenuating media such as tissue.