A chemical compound microarray is a collection of organic chemical compounds spotted on a solid surface, such as glass and plastic. This microarray format is very similar to

DNA microarray A DNA microarray (also commonly known as DNA chip or biochip) is a collection of microscopic DNA spots attached to a solid surface. Scientists use DNA microarrays to measure the expression levels of large numbers of genes simultaneously or to ...

protein microarray A protein microarray (or protein chip) is a high-throughput method used to track the interactions and activities of proteins, and to determine their function, and determining function on a large scale. Its main advantage lies in the fact that larg ...

and

antibody microarray An antibody microarray (also known as antibody array) is a specific form of protein microarray. In this technology, a collection of captured antibodies are spotted and fixed on a solid surface such as glass, plastic, membrane, or silicon chip, and ...

. In chemical genetics research, they are routinely used for searching proteins that bind with specific chemical compounds, and in general drug discovery research, they provide a

multiplex Multiplex may refer to: * Multiplex (automobile), a former American car make * Multiplex (comics), a DC comic book supervillain * Multiplex (company), a global contracting and development company * Multiplex (assay), a biological assay which measu ...

way to search potential drugs for therapeutic targets. There are three different forms of chemical compound microarrays based on the fabrication method. The first form is to covalently immobilize the organic compounds on the solid surface with diverse linking techniques; this platform is usually called

Small Molecule Within the fields of molecular biology and pharmacology, a small molecule or micromolecule is a low molecular weight (≤ 1000 daltons) organic compound that may regulate a biological process, with a size on the order of 1 nm. Many drugs ar ...

Microarray, which is invented and advanced by Dr.

Stuart Schreiber Stuart L. Schreiber (born 6 February 1956) is a scientist at Harvard University and co-Founder of the Broad Institute. He has been active in chemical biology, especially the use of small molecules as probes of biology and medicine. Small molecul ...

and colleague

The second form is to spot and dry organic compounds on the solid surface without immobilization, this platform has a commercial name as Micro Arrayed Compound Screening (μARCS), which is developed by scientists in

Abbott Laboratories Abbott Laboratories is an American multinational medical devices and health care company with headquarters in Abbott Park, Illinois, United States. The company was founded by Chicago physician Wallace Calvin Abbott in 1888 to formulate known dr ...

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The last form is to spot organic compounds in a homogenous solution without immobilization and drying effect, this platform is developed by Dr. Dhaval Gosalia and Dr. Scott Diamon

and later commercialized as DiscoveryDot technology by Reaction Biology Corporatio

Polymer Microarrays Polymer microarrays have been developed to allow screening for new polymeric materials to direct different tissue lineages. Research has also been directed towards studying the surface chemistry of these arrays to determine which surface chemistries control cell adhesion, although concerns have been raised as to the influence of the substrate on measurements and the questionable statistical interpretation of results. The lack of control in the production of many of these polymer arrays suggests that any practical application of these technologies will be limited. This is particularly true for the in situ polymerisation of acrylate monomers in minute volumes.

References

* Uttamchandani, M. ''et al.'' (2005) "Small molecule microarrays, recent advances and applications". ''Curr Opin Chem Biol''. 9, 4–1

* Walsh, D.P. and Chang, Y.T. (2004) "Recent Advances in Small Molecule Microarrays, Applications and Technology". ''Comb Chem High Throughput Screen''. 7, 557–56

* Hoever, M. and Zbinden, P. (2004) "The evolution of microarrayed compound screening. Drug Discov". ''Today'' 9, 358–365. * Gosalia, DN and Diamond, SL. (2003) "Printing Chemical libraries on microarrays for fluid phase nanoliter reactions". ''Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA'', 100, 8721–872

* Ma, H. ''et al.'' (2005) "Nanoliter Homogenous Ultra High Throughput Screening Microarray for Lead Discoveries and IC50 Profiling". ''Assay Drug Dev. Technol''. 3, 177–18

* Horiuchi, K.Y. ''et al.'' (2005) "Microarrays for the functional analysis of the chemical-kinase interactome", accepted, ''J Biomol Screen''. 11, 48–5

* Ma, H. and Horiuchi, K.Y. (2006) "Chemical Microarray: a new tool for drug screening and discovery", ''Drug Discovery Today'', 11, 661–66

Nanotechnology Microarrays