SERS assisted ultra-fast peptidic screening: a new tool for drug discovery

Herein we present a direct label-free ultra-fast method for the identification and classification of the active members of a combinatorial library directly on the solid support used for their synthesis. The method is based on the appropriate functionalization of polyethylene glycol grafted polystyrene (TentaGel (R)) microbeads with Au@Ag nanoparticles, the use of these materials directly as solid-phase supports for the synthesis of combinatorial libraries of peptides and the subsequent SERS analysis for identification of each peptide on each bead.