Christopher J Pino, Jordan U Gutterman, Daniel Vonwil, Samir Mitragotri, V Prasad Shastri
Stratum corneum, the outermost layer of skin, allows transport of only low-molecular weight (<500) lipophilic solutes. Here, we report a surprising finding that avicins (Avs), a family of naturally occurring glycosylated triterpenes with a molecular weight > 2,000, exhibit skin permeabilities comparable to those of small hydrophobic molecules, such as estradiol. Systematic fragmentation of the Av molecule shows that deletion of the outer monoterpene results in a 62% reduction in permeability, suggesting an important role for this motif in skin permeation...
December 26, 2012: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America