Fluid Plasma Membrane Research Articles

IAM chromatography: an in vitro screen for predicting drug membrane permeability.

Fluid cell membranes are the main barrier to drug absorption when diffusion limits uptake. Immobilized artificial membranes (IAMs) are solid phase models of fluid membranes that predicted oral drug absorption in mice for a homologous set of cephalosporins. IAMs also predicted drug permeability through Caco-2 cells. Since drug permeability in Caco-2 cells is known to correlate with the oral absorption of drugs in humans, IAMs may also model drug absorption in humans. IAM analysis is experimentally simple, and large-volume screening of experimental compounds for drug absorption is possible.

Stimulation of mouse lymphocytes by insoluble anti-mouse immunoglobulin.

IT is generally agreed that B-cell surface immunoglobulin (Ig) functions as the receptor for antigen, and so accounts for the specificity of the immune response by clonal selection. It is not known, however, how the combination of surface Ig with antigen stimulates the cell to proliferation and/or differentiation to secrete antibody at a high rate1. A signal could be delivered directly through the receptors, either by an allosteric transition in the receptor itself or by cross-linkage or aggregation of receptor Ig in the fluid cell membrane, analogous to antigen-induced or anti-IgE-induced histamine release from mast cells2. Alternatively, the receptor may act passively as an antigen-specific ‘address’ for the delivery of an antigen-associated nonspecific (that is, potentially polyclonal) signal to some other site on the cell surface3.