Antibody arrays--an emerging tool in cancer proteomics

Cancer is a result of complex changes that occur in normal cells as they transform to become malignant and further when they become metastatic. These changes are not a consequence of a single protein but rather involve multiple proteins that function in pathways and networks. Thus, profiling cancer-associated changes requires simultaneous measurement of many proteins in a single sample. Identifying these changes may lead to the discovery of cancer-associated biomarkers that may assist in diagnosis, prognosis, patient monitoring and possibly for therapeutic purposes. Antibody arrays are a relatively new technology that enables one to perform multiplex high-throughput protein expression profiling. This review describes current technologies in antibody array and assay design, and presents a survey of the current literature on the use of these arrays in cancer research.