Method and apparatus for measuring binding affinity

摘要

A method and device for measuring the binding affinity of a receptor to a ligand. According to one aspect of the invention, arrays of polymers are synthesized or immobilized on a substrate (212). The array of polymers is exposed to a fluorescently-labelled receptor in solutions of varying concentration. The fluorescence intensity of the labelled receptor is measured by way of, e.g., a photon counter using a confocal microscope (316). Binding affinity is determined through analysis of the relationship between fluorescence intensity and the solution concentration of the receptor. On-rates are measured as a kinetic increase in surface fluorescence intensity, and the on-rate constant rate extracted from fits to the data.