Biosensing applications of surface plasmon resonance-based Biacore technology

Abstract

In the past, surface plasmons have been used to improve the surface sensitivity of several spectroscopic measurements. Surface plasmon resonance reflectivity measurements can be used to detect biomolecules and their interactions by changes in the local index of refraction upon adsorption of the target molecule to the metal surface. Using this principle several SPR-based biosensors have been generated in the past with wide range of applications in the field of biology, biomedicine and biochemistry. Among several techniques available for biomolecular interactions, SPR-based Biacore is one of the widely used real-time monitoring systems and proved to be a convenient system for wide range of molecular sizes from small ligands to whole cells. Biacore system can be employed for biomolecular interactions, selection procedures, epitope mapping, molecular discriminations, kinetic analyses, screening processes and other applications. There were several successes reported using the versatility of Biacore system. In this report, several biosensing applications of this system were overviewed.