Final Report Summary - PEPLASER (Combinatorial synthesis of peptide arrays with a laser printer) Our particle based method allows us to synthesise very high complexity peptide arrays by combinatorial synthesis, and for an unrivalled prize. Thereby, we might be able to boost the field of proteomics in a similar way as the high density oligonucleotide arrays did with the field of genomics. Central to our novel method are the activated chemical building blocks that are 'frozen' within solid amino acid particles. These particles are delivered by a modified colour laser printer to defined addresses on a two-dimensional (2D) support. There, the particles are simply melted to induce a spatially defined coupling reaction of now freed amino acid derivatives. By repeated printing and melting cycles this simple trick yields high complexity peptide arrays. Within the PEPLASER proposal we advanced our particle based technology up to the level of robust machines, mated it to bioinformatics and readout tools, and developed paradigmatic applications .for our first-time-available high density peptide arrays. Within Work package (WP) 1 we developed a user friendly 2nd generation peptide laser printer that in 2011 synthesized 275 000 peptides per 20x20 cm(+2) in high quality, reliability, and for an estimated 0.1 % of chemical cost per peptide when compared to the previous state of the art. Within WP 2 we developed a user friendly second generation fluorescence scanner that features an especially fast and sensitive multi-wavelength read out of the large formats delivered by the peptide laser printer. Within WP 3, we considerably augmented the production of amino acid toners and array supports. Thereby, we could increase the synthesis capacity of our particle based method from 0.5 million to >10 million peptides per month during the PEPLASER project time period. This remarkable synthesis capacity with its unrivalled chemical costs per peptide is the economic basis of participating SME PEPperPRINT that commercialises our high density peptide arrays (please see http://www.PEPperPRINT.com online). Within WP 4, we worked out paradigmatic application examples for high density peptide arrays. In one example, we used them to find and to analyse antibiotic peptides. In another example we could correlate patterns of peptides stained with patient sera with bad vs. good prognosis in tumour patients. These peptides were derived from known targets of anti-tumour sera. In yet another approach an array with such a large number of several thousand different peptides was generated that several hundreds of these peptides matched and bound to antibodies from patients either infected or not infected with a pathogenic bacterium. Again, and without any other pre-information we could correlate patterns of stained peptides with disease status. Related documents Final Report - PEPLASER (Combinatorial synthesis of peptide arrays with a laser printer)
