Protein chips clinical diagnostics

American Journal of Clinical Pathology 113 628-646. Borrebaeck CAK (2000) Antibodies in diagnostics - from immunoassays to protein chips. Immunology Today 21 379-382. 

MS has been used to characterize 2DGE- and LC-separated human pituitary proteins and DEPs that are related to human pituitary adenomas [2,12,15-17]. PTMs of proteins are also important to study. MS/MS effectively characterizes the PTMs and determines the modified sites. LC-ESI-qlT MS/MS has been used to identify the phosphorylation [18] and nitration sites [19-21] of proteins in the human pituitary proteome. A human pituitary proteome reference database has been established in our laboratory [12,15], many tumor-related proteins were identified [2,17]. And the primary structure and PTMs of pituitary proteins were MS-characterized [2,12,15-21], Those data could contribute to the basic and clinical research studies of human pituitary tumors. Moreover, novel protein chip-based MS technology [22] might eventually be used for the screening, diagnostics, and therapeutics of human pituitary diseases. 

Despite the investment in proteomics, the introduction of new protein tests in human medicine has not dramatically increased over the last decade and, to some extent, has been disappointing (Pognan 2004) except in animal clinical chemistry, where the number of available assays has improved due to availability of suitable antisera and commercial investment. If key proteins, which are highly diagnostic, are identihed by proteomics, then commercially available reagent kits in suitable formats for liquid chemistry analyzers, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays, or chip technology are required to ensure wider application of these potential biomarkers. 

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