[Contribution of proteomic analysis to study cardiovascular physiopathology]

Proteomic is an innovative approach for determining without any priori the coordinated changes in protein levels contained in a biological sample. This technique now constitutes a powerful tool for revealing, in particular by differential analysis, biological responses and regulation of proteins. This field is becoming essential in each domain for fundamental and clinical biology, mainly in human medicine. It leads to improve the understanding of complex physiopathological processes like those involved in human pathologies, but also for identifying new biomarkers in order to consider new diagnostic and prognostic approaches and original therapeutic targets. The different proteomic techniques, essentially bi-dimensional electrophoresis and mass spectrometry, which benefit from recent technological developments, are presented in this article. A literature review summarize data obtained from proteomic works performed to have better understanding of mechanisms involved in cardiovascular diseases, first cause of morbidity and mortality in the world. Proteomic analysis performed in this area of research are promising, because of the lack of knowledge in the molecular interactions and the complexity of mechanisms involved, and of the impact of environmental risk factors. This impact is being generally only detectable at protein level. These works are only at the beginning and these approaches applied in cardiovascular field will meet a large success in the immediate future and should be promising.