Serum proteomics, biomarker discovery

Puroliit S, Podolsky R, Schatz D, Muir A, Hopkins D, Huang YH, She JX (2006) Assessing tire utility of SELDI-TOF and model averaging for serum proteomic biomarker discovery. Proteomics 6(24) 6405-6415. 

While the above study utilized urine, probably no biofluid has attracted the attention of the proteomic biomarker discovery field as serum and plasma. Although the analysis of serum by RPLC-MS has almost become routine, such is not the case for CE-MS. In a proof of principle study to show the efficacy of using CE-MS to find differentially abundant proteins in serum, the group of Sassi et al. analyzed groups of sera that were spiked with different concentrations of known standard peptides. The groups of sera were analyzed by CE-MS and the standard peptides were successfully identified as being differentially abundant with a success rate of 95%. 

Simpkins, F Czechowicz, J. A., Liotta, L., and Kohn, E. C. SELDI-TOF mass spectrometry for cancer biomarker discovery and serum proteomic diagnostics. Pharmacogenomics, 6 647-653, 2005. 

Steel, L., Shumpert, D., Trotter, M., Seeholzer, S., Evans, A., London, W., Dwek, R. and Block, T., A strategy for the comparative analysis of serum proteomes for the discovery of biomarkers for hepatocellular carcinoma. Proteomics, 3, 601-609 (2003). 

Proteomics is well suited for the discovery of new HCC serological biomarkers by profiling the proteins found in the sera of control subjects versus HCC patients by 2-DE, and to screen for any protein spots that are either absent or present, or altered in abundance or location prior to identification by mass spectrometry. If other serum proteins, other than a-fetoprotein (AFP) can be added to a panel of biomakers, the eonfidence of predicting the onset of HCC will be inereased eonsiderably. 

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