In this work it will be shown, that quartz crystal microbalance is a suitable tool for pharmaceutical analytics. In the first part an overview is given about applying the QCM-technique for investigation of ligand-receptor-interaction, adhesion of cells and supramolecular systems to surfaces. In the experimental part improvements of the QCM-apparatus will be introduced. The focus is set on the immobilizing of ligands and two methods for anchoring proteins to the sensor surface will be applied. A method for estimating binding kinetics from frequency to time plots will be introduced and results for the Avidin-Biotin-system and mono-and polyclonal antibody-antigen-interaction are presented. These results will show that the quartz crystal microbalance is a suitable tool for the easy determining of binding constants. The next part of this work deals with selectin-mediated cell adhesion. Unfortunately, it must be seen that QCM is somewhat limited in the detection of cell adhesion. Nethertheless, it could be shown that QCM is a very suitable tool for the investigation of liposomal adhesion phenomena to surfaces. Especially the additional damping analysis provides further details about adhesion properties of liposomes to surfaces. With many applications of the Quartz crystal microbalance the power and usefulness of this measuring technique for pharmaceutical analytics is shown. |