SPR technology is being improved steadily and today is an essential component in the biopharmaceutical industry. As SPR based assays extract valuable and reliable information at high accuracy and precision they also provide huge advantages and opportunities for basic and applied research. Progress in synthetic biology and scalable transient gene expression systems is rapidly expanding not only the demand but also increasing the repertoire and quality of reagents for molecular recognition studies. We use SPR assays for a huge variety of tasks within a multi-user facility and are particularly interested in using plant-based systems for the discovery, development and production of biopharmaceuticals. The practical uses and applications to plant-produced antibodies and malaria vaccine development will be illustrated.

Focusing on protein cocktails, questions addressing their identity, composition, and potency will be discussed. SPR based assays are not only considered to be instrumental to advance such products into the clinic but will play an equally important role for studying their behavior and efficacy in patients.