Determination of rate constants and equilibrium constants for solution-phase drug-protein interactions by ultrafast affinity extraction.

A method was created on the basis of ultrafast affinity extraction to determine both the dissociation rate constants and equilibrium constants for drug-protein interactions in solution. Human serum albumin (HSA), an important binding agent for many drugs in blood, was used as both a model soluble protein and as an immobilized binding agent in affinity microcolumns for the analysis of free drug fractions. Several drugs were examined that are known to bind to HSA. Various conditions to optimize in the use of ultrafast affinity extraction for equilibrium and kinetic studies were considered, and several approaches for these measurements were examined. The dissociation rate constants obtained for soluble HSA with each drug gave good agreement with previous rate constants reported for the same drugs or other solutes with comparable affinities for HSA. The equilibrium constants that were determined also showed good agreement with the literature. The results demonstrated that ultrafast affinity extraction could be used as a rapid approach to provide information on both the kinetics and thermodynamics of a drug-protein interaction in solution. This approach could be extended to other systems and should be valuable for high-throughput drug screening or biointeraction studies.

Evaluation of alternatives to warfarin as probes for Sudlow site I of human serum albumin: characterization by high-performance affinity chromatography.

Warfarin is often used as a site-specific probe for examining the binding of drugs and other solutes to Sudlow site I of human serum albumin (HSA). However, warfarin has strong binding to HSA and the two chiral forms of warfarin have slightly different binding affinities for this protein. Warfarin also undergoes a slow change in structure when present in common buffers used for binding studies. This report examined the use of four related, achiral compounds (i.e., coumarin, 7-hydroxycoumarin, 7-hydroxy-4-methylcoumarin, and 4-hydroxycoumarin) as possible alternative probes for Sudlow site I in drug binding studies. High-performance affinity chromatography and immobilized HSA columns were used to compare and evaluate the binding properties of these probe candidates. Binding for each of the tested probe candidates to HSA was found to give a good fit to a two-site model. The first group of sites had moderate-to-high affinities for the probe candidates with association equilibrium constants that ranged from 6.4 x 10(3)M(-1) (coumarin) to 5.5 x 10(4)M(-1) (4-hydroxycoumarin) at pH 7.4 and 37 degrees C. The second group of weaker, and probably non-specific, binding regions, had association equilibrium constants that ranged from 3.8 x 10(1)M(-1) (7-hydroxy-4-methylcoumarin) to 7.3 x 10(2)M(-1) (coumarin). Competition experiments based on zonal elution indicated that all of these probe candidates competed with warfarin at their high affinity regions. Warfarin also showed competition with coumarin, 7-hydroxycoumarin and 7-hydroxy-4-methycoumarin for their weak affinity sites but appeared to not bind and/or compete for all of the weak sites of 4-hydroxycoumarin. It was found from this group that 4-hydroxycoumarin was the best alternative to warfarin for examining the interactions of drugs at Sudlow site I on HSA. These results also provided information on how the major structural components of warfarin contribute to the binding of this drug at Sudlow site I.