Thermodynamics of pharmacological action for electron-accepting compounds on activated or damaged cell in the context of Ling's model of the living cell

Abstract: The theory describing action of medicines explored in this paper is based on assumption that vital activity of the cell may be described in terms of the model of two states: resting state and excitation. According to available physiological data excitation state is dangerous for cell and may cause different pathological changes, including "conformational" diseases, due to protein aggregation. Normally, the excitation is completely reversible and the key role is played here by ATP (adenosine-5'-triphosphate) which disaggregates proteins of cytomatrix. The same effect ATP exerts during cell injury by eliciting a "healing" effect. Damage of cell structures we consider as "illness", whereas removal of pathological consequences caused by protein aggregation of any origin we will call "a cure". The latter is considered as physical process of cell recovering from excitation/injury to resting state, which is analyzed in terms of our generalized thermodynamics. "Cure" results in reduction of effective temperature of cell proteins due to binding intracellular water which is present in the cell at concentration of approximately 44 M. As a result of the sorption processes mobility of both water and proteins is greatly reduced, and the corresponding reduction of the effective temperature seen by us as a measure of treatment effect.