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Flavonoids are found in many food items of plant origin. Intake of flavonoids has been linked to the prevention of human diseases including cancer. However, little is known about the intestinal absorption of flavonoids in the cellular level. This study was designed to study the absorption of dietary flavonoids using cultured human intestinal epithelial cell monolayer as a model system and ¹⁴C-flavone as a model compound. ¹⁴C-flavone at 10 μM was found to move across the cell monolayer rapidly both from the luminal to basolateral direction and from the basolateral to luminal direction. The rate of transport from the luminal to basolateral direction was 5 times of the rate for phenylalanine, an aromatic amino acid. Flavone also accumulated substantially in the cells. Replacing sodium in the transport buffer with potassium did not affect the transport but reducing the incubation temperature significantly decreased the …