Session Speaker

How to measure translational diffusion of chemically reactive drugs
Masahide Terazima
Japan

For discovery of drugs and application to patients, drug delivery process is an important factor. Generally, drugs are delivered by translational diffusion, so that information of the transport property of the drug is essential. Because of the importance, there have been developed many methods for measurement of diffusion coefficients of molecules so far. However, all of the methods cannot be used for reactive drugs, because these traditional methods require quite a long time (minutes-hours) for the measurement. Recently, we have developed a new method to monitor the molecular diffusion process within a second or even a millisecond based on the laser-induced transient grating method. This technique can be applied to many reactive species, including organic radicals, proteins, or DNA. Therefore, this technique should be very important for the development of drugs. Not only for measuring the diffusion coefficient of the drugs, this technique can be also used for monitoring a drug-target protein interaction, which is essential for developing effective drugs. Since the interaction can be detected within a second, this method can be combined with a chromatography to look for effective drug in real time. I will introduce the principle and applications of this method in more details.