Biomedical application of SPR biosensors 1

Over the last decade, surface plasmon resonance (SPR) becomes one of the major methods for the detection and investigation of affinity-based interac-tions in biochemistry, bioanalytical chemistry and bio-medicine. The tremendous development of SPR use in biomedical applications during the last years is the reason why attention in this review is focused on the application of SPR for biomedical purposes. Biomedical applications take advantage of the ex-quisite sensitivity of SPR for the determination of DNA hybridization, diagnosis of virus-induced diseases, enzyme–substrate interactions, polyclonal antibody characterization, epitope mapping, protein conformation studies and label-free immunoassays. This review covers also some aspects of the evolu-tion of surface plasmon resonance biosensors. The general principles of SPR sensor action are presen-ted and major SPR formats are described. SPR bio-sensor employment for detection of various analytes ranging from small organics up to large protein com-plexes is reviewed. Immobilization methods used in the design of SPR biosensors are briefly described. Application of SPR for analysis of protein kinases as a major component in signal generation and trans-duction in eukaryotic cell is discussed. New ways of SPR application and new designs of hybrid SPR sen-sors are predicted and discussed. It is concluded that improvement of detection limits, multichannel per-formance, development of advanced recognition ele-ments are the major tasks in developing new SPR sensors