In specific kinematics, hard exclusive amplitudes may be factorized into a short distance dominated part computable in a perturbative way on the one hand, and universal, confinement related hadronic matrix elements on the other hand. The extension of this description to processes such as backward meson electroproduction and forward meson production in antiproton-nucleon scattering leads to define new hadronic matrix elements of three quark operators on the light cone, the nucleonto-meson transition distribution amplitudes, which shed a new light on the nucleon structure.