Study of caffeine binding to human serum albumin using optical spectroscopic methods

The binding of caffeine to human serum albumin (HSA) under physiological conditions has been studied by the methods of fluorescence, UV-vis absorbance and circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy. The mechanism of quenching of HSA fluorescence by caffeine was shown to involve a dynamic quenching procedure. The number of binding sites n and apparent binding constant Kb were measured by the fluorescence quenching method and the thermodynamic parameters ΔH, ΔG, ΔS were calculated. The results indicate that the binding is mainly enthalpy-driven, with van der Waals interactions and hydrogen bonding playing major roles in the reaction. The distance r between donor (HSA) and acceptor (caffeine) was obtained according to the Förster theory of non-radiative energy transfer. Synchronous fluorescence, CD and three-dimensional fluorescence spectroscopy showed that the microenvironment and conformation of HSA were altered during the reaction.