ABSTRACT
The skin represents a potential pathway through which chemicals can access the systemic circulation. Thus, many efforts are currently devoted to evaluate the permeation across the skin as non-invasive route for drug administration in the pharmaceutical industry or as the principal partner for chemicals in cosmetic industry.Experimental procedures evaluating the human skin permeation are expensive and time-consuming and involve ethical considerations. In vitro alternative solutions were then proposed to provide accurate information on skin permeation as early as possible in products development. However, depending on the stage of the discovery process, tools able to screen a very large number of molecules prior to their synthesis are highly required. In silico tools such as the decision tree of Flynn and the quantitative structure-permeation relationships (QSPeR) offer fast and low-cost predictions of transdermal permeation and allow the selection of the most interesting compounds.
