Application of proteomics to posttransplantational follow-up

Proteomic screening of complex biological samples becomes of increasing importance in clinical research and diagnosis. It is expected that the meager number of approx 35,000 human genes gives rise to more than 1,000,000 functional entities at the protein level. Thus, the proteome provides a much richer source of information than the genome for describing the state of health or disease of the human organism. Especially, the composition body fluids comprise a rich source of information on possible changes in the status of health or disease of particular organs and in consequence of the whole organism. Here we describe the application of capillary electrophoresis (CE) coupled on-line to an electrospray-ionization (ESI)-time-of-flight (TOF)-mass spectrometer) to the analysis of human urine for the identification of biomarkers for complications after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.