Fabrication of antibody arrays using thermally responsive elastin fusion proteins

A general method has been developed to immobilize antibodies onto an array surface by employing fusion proteins consisting of an elastin domain with tunable hydrophobic properties and an antibody-binding domain with high binding affinity and specificity for antibodies. Antibodies conjugated with the elastin fusion proteins can be directly printed on a self-assembled monolayer-modified glass slide in a functionally active orientation with a spatially defined pattern. An antibody array sensor for detection of tumor markers was fabricated to demonstrate the utility of the method. We expect that the method presented here could be a simple and universal platform to immobilize antibodies for the fabrication of a variety of antibody array sensors.