Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 4
Biosensors Involved in Drug Discovery
Chapter Outline
4.1 Introduction
61
4.2 Theory
62
4.2.1 Single-Fractal Analysis
62
Binding Rate Coefficient
62
Dissociation Rate Coefficient
63
4.2.2 Dual-Fractal Analysis
63
Binding Rate Coefficient
63
4.1 Introduction
Biosensors are finding increasing applications in drug discovery. Appropriate drugs have to
be initially identified from a wide spectrum of possible drug candidates. Biosensors are an
appropriate means to help identify these drugs. This can be a Herculean task at times, con-
suming tremendous amounts of time and resources. Biosensors can significantly shorten this
time and also help minimize the resources required to help identify suitable drug candidates
initially.
It must be recognized that identifying possible drug candidates is an important step, because
in general, it takes about 10 years and around 600-700 million dollars to bring a drug from
bench scale to the market. Surely, it would be tragic if during the initial identification of pos-
sible drug(s), one misses a good drug candidate either by using biosensors or by some other
suitable identification technique. Thus, the importance of this initial identification step,
wherein biosensors can be very useful, is quite clear. The biosensor technique is also a simple
technique, which helps identify suitable drug candidates.
In this chapter we use fractal analysis to analyze (a) the binding and dissociation (if applica-
ble) kinetics of the catalytic subunit (C
a
) of CAPK in solution to adenosine-ologoarginine
conjugates (ARC) using a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensor (
Viht et al., 2007
),
(b) the binding of phosphate ion (P
i
) in solution to a rhodamine-PBP (phosphate binding pro-
tein) phosphate biosensor (
Okoh et al., 2006
), and (c) the binding of methionine-7-amido-4-
