Future Trends in SPR Technology

We anticipate that surface plasmon resonance (SPR) technology will remain the gold standard in direct biomolecular interaction sensing during the next decade. Although in the past only one company (Biacore AB) mainly dominated the market (B90%) of high-quality SPR systems including optics, liquid handling and sensor chips, new players and new trends can be identified. As highlighted in Chapter 3, with 25 SPR-related companies the market is now more open than ever before and competition between companies takes place on several aspects of the SPR system. The customers for instruments will profit further from this competition, offering more flexibility, innovation and costeffectiveness. The field of clinical analysis including proteomics in all its facets is expected to undergo a revolutionary change with the introduction of new multianalyte diagnostic SPR systems. Mainly the combination of SPR imaging and dedicated microfluidic ‘‘lab-on-a-chip’’ may drive the technology to another level of commercialization where point of care (POC) devices for specific applications may be the ultimate objective. For applications in the field of kinetic and thermodynamic characterization of molecular binding parameters, higher computational power readily available with desktop PCs brings more sophisticated approaches within reach. In this Chapter, anticipated trends regarding the SPR systems are highlighted. Necessarily, this may sometimes have a speculative character and we