A quantitative method for the measurement of membrane affinity by polydiacetylene-based colorimetric assay

The measurement of membrane affinity is an important early screening step during drug discovery. However, classical methods for membrane affinity measurement are tedious and difficult to implement in high-throughput screening. This article describes a quantitative method for the measurement of membrane affinity by colorimetric assay based on polydiacetylene (PDA) sensors. Prepared lipid/PDA chromatic vesicles were used to model cell membranes. By measuring the colorimetric response of the chromatic vesicles when drug-membrane interactions occurred, membrane affinity constant K(b) could be calculated using a simple quantitative model. Under optimized preparation conditions, the calculated log(K(b)) values exhibited an in-batch relative standard deviation (RSD) of less than 4% and a between-batch RSD of less than 8% for all three reference compounds. The logarithm of K(b) of the six β-blockers exhibited excellent linear correlation with the logarithm of the liposome/water partition coefficient (K(m)) with R(2)=0.9793. For neutral compounds, the log(K(b)) of n-fatty alcohols correlated with the logarithm of the n-octanol/water partition coefficient (K(oct)) with a linear correlation coefficient R(2)=0.9833. This work provides a simple, convenient, and reproducible method for the rapid measurement of membrane affinity and presents important implications for high-throughput screening.