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Species, doses and routes extrapolation can be sucessfully carried out by using a physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) approach. And PBPK approach to assess risk of hazardous chemicals is reasonable whatever the exposure scenarios are happened. Both partitioning coefficients of chemical between tissue and blood and enzymatic metabolic rate constants are key parameters to build up the PBPK model. In this study, we tried to estimate in vitro metabolic rate constants using a special apparatus instead to measure the in vivo constants which are used to PBPK simulation since the in vitro tests are less expensive and more convenient than in vivo tests. For the purpose, we designed and tested the new system to measure continuously the headspace concentration of VOC. The newly designed system is composed with a diffusion chamber which generates gaseous substrate, a reaction vessel with a recirculating pump to establish a closed system, an autbmatic sampler from a gas phase, a gas chromatography to analyze the headspace. In addition, a cold water condenser is attached between the reaction vessel and pump to reduce the content of gaseous moisture which interferes with chemical analysis. To validate the newly developed methodology, in vitro metabolic rate constants of trichloroethylene (TCE) as a prototype VOC were estimated by simulating observed results with an ACSL program. The simulated results are consistent to those estimated by the other research groups. This finding suggests that our newly designed closed system may be a useful apparatus to estimate in vitro metabolic rate constants for VOC.
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