Challenge Team Interim Report

Team Number: 046 School Name: Moriarty High School Area of Science: Pharmokinetics Project Title: Pharmokinetics of Insulin

Problem Definition:

In our project we plan to use first order pharmokinetics to demonstrate the effects of type I diabetes. Currently pharmokinetics is a very active field that gives this project real world applications. Many people suffer from type I diabetes, proving that this project has real applications. Using a two compartment math model, we will show how the insulin is first taken into the system, then processed by the liver and other organs.These organs will be represented as one object to avoid over complicating the model. Then how the insulin recalculates, and is slowly eliminated by the body.

Problem Solution:

The drug used in our project is insulin that has been given intervenously. One advantage to giving drugs in this fashion is that the drug is absorbed into the system much more quickly than in any other method of delivery. We have also determined that in order to keep things under control we will use a single compartment math model for our project. This means that our math model will only represent the body as a whole unit, while in reality each part of the body has different reactions with different chemicals. Next we will illustrate what happens in the body. How the insulin is absorbed, processed, recalculated, and then defused and expelled by the body. The insulin is processed and filtered primarily by the liver, which eliminates the drug in a unit called half-lives. A half-life is the time it takes for the amount of drug in the system to be reduced by half. The rate of elimination is also a determining factor in finding the half-life. The clearance, which is how much of the drug can possibly be removed per time unit, affects the rate of elimination. The initial concentration of the drug effects both the previously mentioned factors. One of our major dilemmas was, other than finding our constants that the rate at which the body filters out substances from the blood does not form a linear solution. However we have found a way to convert the non-linear solution into one that is, following the rules of first order kinetics if you plot the rate of change versus the plasma concentration your result is a straight, or linear, line. Once we have determined all of our constants we can plug them into our math model and we will get the results of how insulin is absorbed into the body, how long it took to be removed from the body, etc.

Progress to Date:

Team Members

Team Mail

• Robert Buckly
• Daniel Chavez
• Daniel Treibel

Sponsoring Teachers

• Paula Avery

Project Advisor(s)