A central dogma of pharmacology is that only unbound drug is capable of translocation across biological membrane. Thus, hepatic uptake is assumed to be solely determined by the unbound concentration of the diffusible moiety at the surface of the liver cell. However, an increasing number of experimental observations with xenobiotics that are normally very extensively bound to plasma proteins (>99%) appear to be inconsistent with these assumptions. This suggested that in addition to progressive spontaneous dissociation within the liver sinusoids and space of Disse, direct interactions of the albumin-drug complex at the plasma membrane may facilitate dissociation of the complex. To explain this phenomena. called albumin-mediated uptake, 4 mechanisms have been suggested. The validity of such hypotheses needs to be examined by the further study. Because albumin-mediated uptake has also been observed to occur in other plasma proteins, protein-mediated uptake rather than albumin-mediated uptake seems to be acceptable.