Isothermal Titration Calorimeter

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) is a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), conducting research into the causes, treatment, and prevention of neurological disorders and stroke. The NINDS mission is to seek fundamental knowledge about the brain and nervous system and to use that knowledge to reduce the burden of neurological disease.

The NINDS Neuro Therapeutics Development Unit (NTDU) provides a resource for investigators at NINDS and other NIH Institutes to develop neuro-protective and neuro- regenerative therapeutics entities. A significant part of this work includes development of assays to quantitate the interactions of ligands to their receptors, protein binding to proteins, substrates interacting with their target enzymes, antibodies binding to their antigens and even the interaction of two small molecules. To achieve this, the NINDS NTDU requires an isothermal titration calorimeter (ITC). This equipment will be used in quantitative studies of a wide variety of biomolecular interactions. The ITC measures the heat that is either released or absorbed during binding interactions. ITC is the only technique that can simultaneously determine all binding parameters in a single experiment. Measuring heat transfer during binding enables accurate determination of binding constants (KD), reaction stoichiometry (n), enthalpy (∆H) and entropy (ΔS). This provides a complete thermodynamic profile of the molecular interaction.