Advances in contact printing technologies of carbohydrate, peptide and protein arrays

• Advances in printing techniques for arraying biologically relevant molecules are described.
• Covalent reactions and non-covalent binding for printing of carbohydrates, peptides and proteins are summarized.
• Immobilization of peptides, carbohydrates and proteins is explained.
• Recent applications in cell adhesion and cell spreading on these printed arrays are demonstrated.
• Applications in stem cell research, single cell drug delivery as well as anti-inflammatory coatings are shown.

Microcontact printing (μCP) techniques are powerful tools to print molecules on reactive surfaces in a covalent or non-covalent manner to produce well-defined patterns, in shape and spot morphology, of bioactive molecules such as carbohydrates, peptides and proteins. These printed biofunctional surfaces have nowadays found increased use in a range of bioanalytical and biomedical applications, for example, in the investigation of eukaryotic cell and bacteria behavior on solid supports. This review focuses on advances in techniques of μCP over the past three years and some recent appealing applications of the printed arrays are illustrated.

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