Comparison of surface and hydrogel-based protein microchips

Protein microchips are designed for high-throughput evaluation of the concentrations and activities of various proteins. The rapid advance in microchip technology and a wide variety of existing techniques pose the problem of unified approach to the assessment and comparison of different platforms. Here we compare the characteristics of protein microchips developed for quantitative immunoassay with those of antibodies immobilized on glass surfaces and in hemispherical gel pads. Spotting concentrations of antibodies used for manufacturing of microchips of both types and concentrations of antigen in analyte solution were identical. We compared the efficiency of antibody immobilization, the intensity of fluorescence signals for both direct and sandwich-type immunoassays, and the reaction-diffusion kinetics of the formation of antibody-antigen complexes for surface and gel-based microchips. Our results demonstrate higher capacity and sensitivity for the hydrogel-based protein microchips, while fluorescence saturation kinetics for the two types of microarrays was comparable.