Recent Developments in Affinity Capillary Electrophoresis: A Review

Affinity capillary electrophoresis (ACE) is a versatile analytical technique that has been shown to be an efficient and accurate tool to probe non-covalent interactions and to determine binding and dissociation constants between receptors and ligands. ACE uses as its basis the change in migration time of a receptor upon binding to a ligand generally found in the electrophoresis buffer. Subsequent analysis using non-interacting standards realizes values for the binding constant. The technique has a number of advantages over other binding assay methods in that binding parameters can be obtained expeditiously, reproducibly, and with minimal sample quantity requirements and preparation. This review focuses on the literature describing the use of ACE from January 2003 to July 2004. Keywords: Affinity capillary electrophoresis, Binding constants, Receptor-ligand interactions, Binding assays