Atomic Force Microscopy in the Pharmaceutical Sciences

Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) has many uses in the field of pharmaceutical research, including the investigation of in situ processes, interaction mechanisms, behavioral properties, and structure-function relationships. Although these examples are just a sampling of the work that has been conducted in drug interaction and disease mechanism studies, they indicate how important the atomic force microscope can be in furthering pharmaceutical sciences. The complementary nature of AFM with other analytical techniques will certainly result in many more applications as it is further adopted by the pharmaceutical community and as new AFM/SPM techniques are developed.