Vinyl sulfone-silica is a silica support functionalised with vinyl sulfone groups that combines the excellent stability and handling properties of silica with the reactivity of the vinyl sulfone moiety towards amino and thiol groups under mild conditions without the need for prior activation. This product has applications in two areas of biotechnology: biomolecule (protein, enzyme, drug, amino sugar, thio-sugar, etc.) immobilisation, affinity chromatography and “pull down” experiments