Clinical proteomics: My view of the current issues

Personalized medicine is expected to revolutionize health care delivery in the next decade. I believe that targeted proteomic diagnostics and therapeutics will be the basis of personalized molecular medicine. Clinical proteomics is the application of proteomic techniques to the field of medicine. The application of clinical proteomic research is growing rapidly in the field of biomarker discovery, especially in the area of cancer diagnostics. Because most diseases like cancer are complex, it is unlikely that a single biomarker could be used successfully for the early detection of cancer. It is likely that a multiple marker panel would be required for cancer diagnostics. Recent advances in proteomics and bioinformatics technologies, such as mass spectrometry (MS) and affinity-based methods, such as protein microarrays, have been used successfully to detect disease-associated biomarkers in complex biological specimens, for example, cell lysates, serum, plasma, and other body fluids. Extensive validation will be needed to transform these biomarkers into targeted clinical use.