Biomarker discovery and clinical proteomics

New biomarkers are urgently needed to accelerate efforts in developing new drugs and treatments of known diseases. New clinical and translational proteomics studies emerge almost every day. However, discovery of new diagnostic biomarkers lags behind because of variability at every step in proteomics studies (e.g., assembly of a cohort of patients, sample preparation and the nature of body fluids, selection of a profiling method and uniform protocols for data analysis). Quite often, the validation step that follows the discovery phase does not reach desired levels of sensitivity, specificity or reproducibility between laboratories. Mass spectrometry and gel-based methods do not provide enough throughput for screening thousands of clinical samples. Further development of protein arrays may address this issue. Despite many obstacles, proteomics delivers vast amounts of information useful for understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying diseases. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.