Projects

Peptide arrays

(Laura Weber, Dario Mager, Felix Löffler, Frank Breitling)

Our “solid-material-based-method”, first embeds amino acid building blocks within solid materials. The different amino acids are then consecutively addressed to very small areas onto a two-dimensional support as solid “amino-acid-particles”, either by a “peptide-laser-printer“, (more) or with the help of small cavities that randomly accommodate exactly one “amino-acid-particle”. (more) In another variation of this theme, a multi material nano3D printer uses single laser pulses to transfer tiny ”amino-acid-spots” from a donor to an acceptor. (more) In all of these cases the coupling reaction is then induced simply by melting the solid-material-embedded layer of amino acid building blocks, which frees hitherto immobilized amino acid derivatives to diffuse to and react with amino groups on the surface of the support. Resulting high-density peptide arrays find many applications in the life sciences. (more) They are commercialized by our spin-off company PEPperPRINT.

Peptide-laser-printer

(Volker Stadler, Ralf Bischoff, Frank Breitling)

Within the EU FP7 project PEPLASER (more) we developed a “peptide laser printer” (more) to synthesize >560.000 peptides per 20x20 cm². The machine has 24 printing drums to print 24 different amino acid toners. Resulting peptide arrays are commercialized by our spin off company PEPperPRINT.

One-cavity-one-peptide-method

(Zekun Zhou, Frank Breitling)

Within BMBF projects ANTIBIOTIKA and KATMETHAN we developed a method that uses glass slides with 2,5 Mio small cavities of some 12µm diameter and 10µm depth. Since only one “amino-acid-particle” with a size of 10µm fits into a slightly larger cavity, we can synthesize >2,5 Mio different random peptides with this method. (more) These very-high-density peptide arrays should find many applications in the life sciences. (more)

nano3D printer

(Laura Weber, Dario Mager, Felix Löffler, Frank Breitling)

The multi-material nano3D printer was invented by Dr. Felix Löffler. Currently, we advance it together with Dr. Dario Mager, Dr. Felix Löffler, and SME PEPperPRINT to an industry-robot with a Technology Readiness Level of 9 (TRL9).

Originally, we used the nano3D printer to synthesize very-high-density peptide arrays. (more) Recently, we learned that it is the perfect machine to do extremely miniaturized chemical synthesis in the array format, (more) and also extremely miniaturized material research in the array format. (more)