Functional Nanoarrays for Protein Biomarker Profiling

The success of microarrays for analyzing nucleic acid and, more recently, protein-protein interactions illustrates the advantages of bioassay miniaturization. However, the current level of miniaturization of useful bioanalytical tools still creates limits in terms of breadth of application. For example, analyses of picoliter sample volumes containing protein analytes that cannot be amplified or replaced (e.g., cancer biopsy material) require unprecedented levels of miniaturization and novel analytical approaches. Novel platform technologies comprised of instrumentation, methods and software must be developed to achieve the goals of ultraminiaturized biodiagnostics. We will describe one such system and its real-world application to biomarker profiling.