The company PEPperPRINT, headquartered in Heidelberg/Germany, has developed a technology to produce 3D molecular printing of peptide libraries by coupling individual amino acids in situ to form linear peptide chains.

The advantage of this technology is the sheer unlimited diversity of peptide sequences that can be synthesized in parallel, using only very small material quantities at a minimal cost.

In contrast to regular peptide array production, which requires additional synthesis and spotting steps PEPperPRINT prints the desired amino acid pattern directly, level by level, on a chip. Between the printing steps, toner particles are melted to release the activated amino acids. The peptide bond can be formed either by the linker or the previous amino acid that was printed at the same position. After washing and de-protection of the peptide N-terminus, the next amino acid pattern is printed and coupled. By repeating this cycle, up to 30,000 different peptides in duplicate consisting of up to 20 amino acids are synthesized in parallel. The huge sequence variety accompanied by low synthesis costs is unique and allows the generation of large peptide libraries for serum biomarker screens or peptide-target binder discovery. In addition, due to the digital printing flexibility, custom PEPperCHIP^® Peptide Microarrays can be manufactured and supplied in any quantity, from single microarrays to hundreds of chips within only 3-5 weeks. Furthermore, the peptide content can be easily adapted or adjusted from one project to the next.