Vitamin C as cells rapidly reduce dehydroascorbic acid to ascorbate. SVCTs appear to be the predominant system for vitamin C transport in the body, the notable exception being red blood cells, which lose SVCT proteins during maturation. In both vitamin C synthesizers (example: rat) and non-synthesizers (example: human) cells with few exceptions maintain ascorbic acid concentrations much higher than the approximately 50 micromoles/liter (µmol/L) found in plasma. For example, the ascorbic acid content of pituitary and adrenal glands can exceed 2,000 µmol/L, and muscle is at 200-300 µmol/L. The known coenzymatic functions of ascorbic acid do not require such high concentrations, so
Chemistry of ascorbic acid from animal adrenal glands. In 1932 Charles Glen King confirmed that it was indeed the antiscorbutic factor. In 1933, sugar chemist Walter Norman Haworth, working with samples of "hexuronic acid" that Szent-Györgyi had isolated from paprika and sent him in the previous year, deduced the correct structure and optical-isomeric nature of the compound, and in 1934 reported its first synthesis. In reference to the compound's antiscorbutic properties, Haworth and Szent-Györgyi proposed to rename it "a-scorbic acid" for the compound, and later specifically -ascorbic acid. Because of their work, in 1937 the Nobel Prizes for chemistry and medicine were awarded to