Clinical Proteomics Today Among practitioners and the public alike, modern medicine is understood as being both a science and an art. The science is based on the knowledge of the behavior of disease, the measurement of indices that accurately describe disease development, and treatment protocol. The art is founded on the careful observation and interpretation of the empirical data represented in each individual being evaluated. Clinical proteomics today also needs to be understood from the perspective of being both a science and an art. It represents a laboratory science providing exact measurement of the changes in protein expression profiles that occur during disease processes. It represents an art in the selection and application of clinical paradigms that can be used to interpret the patterns of dynamic protein expression observed in samples obtained at certain moments of evaluation. The art is in understanding what the context of that sampling time point has in the evaluation of disease. In this Special Issue of the Journal of Proteome Research, we have assembled a cross-sectional view of current practice in the science and art of clinical proteomics. These studies provide us with the best practice examples of technology platforms applying highly sensitive and accurate identifications of protein constituents present in complex clinical samples. Much of the attention in the community is focused today on the identification of biomarkers that can be used to assist in the diagnosis of established disease, to monitor the response to treatment, or to identify early disease in individual subjects. To meet this interest, we have included a wide breath of state of the art thinking from leading laboratories that describes the approaches they have taken to meet these challenges. Likewise, we understand that future health care models require that we be aware of the economic realities associated with each new assay that evaluates established disease. Clinical proteomics can further contribute in studies that address disease prevention and in helping us understand the biomarkers associated with a healthy state maintained by nutritional and environ-
10.1021/pr1012569
© 2011 American Chemical Society
mental well being. Finally, our knowledge of diseases is being advanced in large population-based studies globally, and the use of data from these epidemiological resources will highly impact our ability to both model and solve disease-related questions in the future. This will be further amplified in 2011 by the combined workflows begun by Human Proteome Project (HPP) to map out the loci of specific proteins on individual genes and chromosomes (http://www.hupo.org/research/hpp/ ). Clinical proteomics is advancing at a very fast face in 2011 and we are delighted to provide this overview from your colleagues to help mark our progress and provide direction for the future. Best Regards,
And do not forget that each of lifes’ moments provides the essence of both art and science. ¨ RGY A. MARKO-VARGA‡ THOMAS E. FEHNIGER*,† and GYO Institute of Clinical Medicine, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia, and Department of Surgery, Tokyo Medical University, Tokyo, Japan * To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: Thomas.
[email protected] and
[email protected]. † Tallinn University of Technology. ‡ Tokyo Medical University.
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