Simultaneous optimal experimental design for in vitro binding parameter estimation

Simultaneous optimization of in vitro ligand binding studies using an optimal design software package that can incorporate multiple design variables through non-linear mixed effect models and provide a general optimized design regardless of the binding site capacity and relative binding rates for a two binding system. Experimental design optimization was employed with D- and ED-optimality using PopED 2.8 including commonly encountered factors during experimentation (residual error, between experiment variability and non-specific binding) for in vitro ligand binding experiments: association, dissociation, equilibrium and non-specific binding experiments. Moreover, a method for optimizing several design parameters (ligand concentrations, measurement times and total number of samples) was examined. With changes in relative binding site density and relative binding rates, different measurement times and ligand concentrations were needed to provide precise estimation of binding parameters. However, using optimized design variables, significant reductions in number of samples provided as good or better precision of the parameter estimates compared to the original extensive sampling design. Employing ED-optimality led to a general experimental design regardless of the relative binding site density and relative binding rates. Precision of the parameter estimates were as good as the extensive sampling design for most parameters and better for the poorly estimated parameters. Optimized designs for in vitro ligand binding studies provided robust parameter estimation while allowing more efficient and cost effective experimentation by reducing the measurement times and separate ligand concentrations required and in some cases, the total number of samples.