Isothermal Titration Calorimetry and Differential Scanning Calorimetry

Isothermal titration [Holdgate (BioTechniques 31:164-184, 2001); Ward and Holdgate (Prog. Med. Chem. 38:309-376, 2001); O'Brien et al. (2001) Isothermal titration calorimetry of biomolecules. In: Harding, S. E. and Chowdhry, B. Z. (eds.), Protein-Ligand Interactions: Hydrodynamics and Calorimetry, A Practical Approach. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK] and differential scanning calorimetry [Jelesarov and Bosshard (J. Mol. Recognit. 12:3-18, 1999); Privalov and Dragan (Biophys. Chem. 126:16-24, 2007); Cooper et al. (2001) Differential scanning microcalorimetry. In: Harding, S. E. and Chowdhry, B. Z. (eds.), Protein-Ligand Interactions: Hydrodynamics and Calorimetry, A Practical Approach. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK] are valuable tools for characterising protein targets, and their interactions with ligands, during the drug discovery process. The parameters obtained from these techniques: triangle DeltaH, triangle DeltaG, triangle DeltaS, and triangle DeltaC (p), are properties of the entire system studied and may be composed of many contributions, including the binding reaction itself, conformational changes of the protein and/or ligand during complexation, changes in solvent organisation or other equilibria linked to the binding process. Dissecting and understanding these components, and how they contribute to binding interactions, is a critical step in the ability to design ligands that have high binding affinity for the target protein.