A versatile approach to high-throughput microarrays using thiol-ene chemistry

Microarray technology has become extremely useful in expediting the investigation of large libraries of materials in a variety of biomedical applications, such as in DNA chips, protein and cellular microarrays. In the development of cellular microarrays, traditional high-throughput printing strategies on stiff, glass substrates and non-covalent attachment methods are limiting. We have developed a facile strategy to fabricate multifunctional high-throughput microarrays embedded at the surface of a hydrogel substrate using thiol-ene chemistry. This user-friendly method provides a platform for the immobilization of a combination of bioactive and diagnostic molecules, such as peptides and dyes, at the surface of poly(ethylene glycol)-based hydrogels. The robust and orthogonal nature of thiol-ene chemistry allows for a range of covalent attachment strategies in a fast and reliable manner, and two complementary strategies for the attachment of active molecules are demonstrated.