Proteomics in laboratory medicine. Preface.

摘要

Laboratory medicine and proteomics may seem by many clinicians and research scientists, including those actively working in the field of proteomics, to be worlds apart. After all, a visitor to a typical hospital or clinical reference laboratory is not greeted with the hum of mass spectrometers and protein microarray machines busily measuring suites of clinically relevant protein analytes. Proteomics, or the comprehensive and broad-scale analysis of proteins at the "omic" or multiplexed level, however, has been a central focal point of intensive government, pharmaceutical, and academic efforts. This is because of the principal proximity of proteins as the functional control element for cellular function and disease process, and the promise that protein biomarkers bring for early detection of disease, recurrence monitoring, and tailored treatment. Although DNA is the information archive, it is the proteins that do the work of the cell. Most of the new classes of molecular inhibitors, especially for oncology, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases, act on protein function and activity, not genes. Although pharmacogenomics has received a lot of press, proteomics may actually end up dominating the field of companion diagnostics, or theranostics: because the drug targets are most often proteins, directly measuring their presence or function provides a direct route for patient selection for response and stratification whereby the biomarker is the diagnostic and therapeutic target all-in-one (eg, c-erbB2). Many of the therapeutics themselves are proteins.