Protein and antibody arrays and their medical applications.

Many new gene products are being discovered by large-scale genomics and proteomics strategies, the challenge is now to develop high throughput approaches to systematically analyse these proteins and to assign a biological function to them. Having access to these gene products as recombinantly expressed proteins, would allow them to be robotically arrayed to generate protein chips. Other applications include using these proteins for the generation of specific antibodies, which can also be arrayed to produce antibody chips. The availability of such protein and antibody arrays would facilitate the simultaneous analysis of thousands of interactions within a single experiment. This chapter will focus on current strategies used to generate protein and antibody arrays and their current applications in biological research, medicine and diagnostics. The shortcomings of these approaches, the developments required, as well as the potential applications of protein and antibody arrays will be discussed.