Protein biochips: the calm before the storm

The growth of protein biochip technology is on a different trajectory than other drug discovery and development technologies, such as DNA sequencing and high-throughput screening, where output per experiment has grown exponentially. By contrast, experimentation with protein biochips immediately hit barriers in output because of the limited availability of content and the challenges of running biochemical experiments on the surface of a biochip. Nevertheless, the industry has been making significant progress recently by launching new platforms with focused content and new multiplexed biochemical assays. However, this success might only represent the calm before the storm. Over the long-term, protein biochips have the potential to change the drug discovery and development process at the molecular level. The output and throughput of protein biochips could enable researchers to change from the traditional model of one target-one drug to a new model of evaluating one or more potential drugs against a panel of relevant molecular targets from a complex disease state.