Transport phenomena with reactions in drug delivery: Towards a quantitative description

Abstract

AbstractA distributed system called a Krogh cylinder is used here to quantify the transport of a solute from the capillary into the extravascular tissue. The capillary network is broken down into cylindrical cells, each containing a capillary and an appropriate amount of extravascular tissue. The flow in the cylinder model has two‐dimensional velocities, which are in the axial and radial directions. All parameters of the system, together with the geometric ones, have been included in the model. For a given bioavailability, the uptakes of reactive and nonreactive solutes have been obtained. Very large or massive molecules have been considered. The diffusion in the tissue is found to be very low. Most of the drug uptake happens through convection, which is slowed down in the presence of a reaction. Further, this convection is entirely due to the flow out into the lymphatic system. For the case where a reaction takes place, local equilibrium is assumed, which both cuts down the computation times and provides good results in the case of reactive solutes. The full results of a distributed system have been obtained for the first time, and the mechanics of how the area‐under‐the‐curve can be used to calculate the actual solute uptake have been determined.