Response to "comment on 'structural determinants of drug partitioning in surrogates of phosphatidylcholine bilayer strata'"

Abstract

We used the solvatochromic correlation to explain the influence of characteristics of studied compounds on the partition coefficients (P) measured using n-hexadecane (C16) and the novel headgroup surrogate (diacetyl phosphatidylcholine, DAcPC), and compared them with those in other systems, including the C16/water (W) system. The comment analyzes why our correlation for the C16/W system has the standard deviation (SD) higher than that published previously. The main reason is that in our, much smaller, data set the measured P values are complemented by the P values predicted by a reliable, unrelated method. We believe that this approach is acceptable for the aforementioned comparison. We did not use just experimental values, as suggested in the comment, because the solvatochromic correlation, although exhibiting 35% reduction in the SD, was accompanied by a sign change of one of the regression coefficients. The recommended use of special solvatochromic solute characteristics for a few compounds and replacement of a predicted PC16/W value by the experimental value resulted in improved correlations. The observed differences between our correlation and those published in the comment and in a previous article do not affect our main conclusions regarding the solvation of solutes in the surrogates (DAcPC and C16) of intrabilayer strata.

Keywords: Abraham solvation model; bilayer core surrogate; core; diacetyl phosphatidylcholine (DAcPC); headgroups; interface; linear solvation energy relationship (LSER); n-hexadecane/water partitioning; partition coefficient; solvatochromic correlation; transfer energy.