Can Novel Cancer Serological Biomarkers Be Discovered Using Proteomics, and Why Have Past Attempts Failed?
David W. Speicher, Ph.D., Professor & Chair, Systems Biology Division; Director, Proteomics Laboratory, The Wistar Institute Discovery of novel cancer biomarkers in plasma or serum using proteomics could have a dramatic positive impact on early cancer diagnosis as well as clinical management of disease after diagnosis. Despite this great potential, there has been little success during the first decade of the proteomics era because the complexity of human plasma proteomes greatly exceeds protein profiling capacities of conventional methods such as 2-D PAGE and LC/LC-MS/MS. Two of the most important challenges are the wide range of plasma protein abundances and the highly heterogeneous nature of plasma protein profiles in the human population. Due to the presence of a handful of very abundant, heterogeneous plasma proteins, conventional protein profiling methods can detect only a few proteins below the microgram per mL level. However, the most specific cancer biomarkers are expected to b
