Antibody-based Proteomics: From bench to bedside

Over the past 75 years, antibodies have gone from being recognized as disease biomarkers to being used as very powerful therapeutic tools. This evolution has been accelerated by the identification of mAb and the extensive use of immunological tools both at fundamental and clinical levels. In this review, we evaluate how antibodies can be used to assess the proteome of cells or tissues and their relevance for clinical applications. These antibody-based proteomics approaches also require analytical and technological pipelines as well as specific enabling tools which are described. Our first objective was to establish how large-scale datasets (provided by high-throughput studies such as proteomics and transcriptomics) can be integrated with literature searches and clinical data to identify potentially relevant markers against which antibodies should be raised. Then based on an extensive literature review and our experience, we compare the methodologies developed to produce specific antibodies either in vivo or in vitro. This is followed by the description of the validation tools currently available and it also includes the use of antibody-based approaches in the establishment of molecular signatures utilized at the bench and soon available for bedside use.