Peptide array technology is an important method to study protein interactions and is also a high-throughput experimental technique that develops rapidly in recent years; the new bio-chip can directly reveal protein interactions. Therefore, it has raised increasing concerns in the medical community, which drives scientists to focus from functional proteomics research to genomics research.
Technically, proteomics mainly studies the formation and structure of cell protein, interactions between protein-protein elements, and the relationship of disease-based pathogenesis. While the interactions between proteins and other biological macromolecules like nucleic acids and cubicin are the key part for proteomics research. Currently, many techniques have been developed for the interaction studies and peptide array technology is the key and one of the best techniques. As a high-throughput research tool, polypeptide array is a novel bio-chip, which can specially design high density located in the vector matrix of special treatment. With this bio-chip, scientists are able to reveal the secrets of protein-protein interactions directly with other biological macromolecules.
Polypeptide arrays are widely used in drug screening, target validation, epitope mapping, vaccine development, and structural function research. At the same time, out of interest for the growing peptide drugs, this technology can meet the needs from a lot of pharmaceutical companies in growing polypeptide drug development. So, how about the practical applications of peptide array technology? The details are as followed.
1. Basic scientific research
By using polypeptide array technology, the researchers are able to carry out the target protein effect in binding sites of high-throughput screening, such as the binding and screening of intracellular kinase, as well as binding sites of dysfunctional protein diseases.
2. Vaccine development
An epitope is a surface domain that corresponding to an immune antibody recognition. Through multiple array technology, a viral or bacterial protein could be placed on the chip, and react to the serum of patients with different courses. The reaction site or binding domain will be further screened to identify specific antibodies against protection epitope. After that epitope can be used for active or passive-specific immune response.
3. Drug Development
Peptide arrays can speed up the process of drug research and development. With Pep-Hit technology, the researchers are able to synthesize hundreds of artifacts to test the polypeptide target protein, thereby promoting active inhibitor or competitive binding findings. Similarly, many other biological molecules or compounds can also be used in peptide array technology for its interaction studies with the target protein.
4. The development of diagnostic kits
Epitopes of many pathogens (bacterial or viral) can be directly synthesized on the bio-chip in the reaction and patient samples (e.g. serum, urine, mucosal secretions). Finally, through examining the reaction of fingerprints, rapid diagnosis of many diseases becomes possible. Certainly, during the process, the main features of polypeptide array technology can be great helpful: high density, high throughput, high specificity, cost-effective, fast and simple experimental operation.
In addition, accurate results and high sensitivity can also be the special features. Current high-throughput peptide array technology has been widely used in protein interaction studies, drug screening, diagnostic reagents development, biological and biomarker detection. Given the fact, it’s time for researchers to promote such study, trying to enable more applicable biotech discoveries.