Pharmaceutical applications of microcalorimetry.

General principles and applications of microcalorimetry are reviewed. Microcalorimetry is useful in the study of physical, chemical, and biological drug interactions. The sensitivity of the present instrumentation is approximately 0.1 microW. With this high sensitivity, additional applications have been developed, including the interactions of drugs with food, lymphoma cells, microorganisms, blood, excipients, and cyclodextrin. A recent application of microcalorimetry is the measurement of degradation rates of drugs.