Optimized autoantibody profiling on protein arrays

Profiling the autoantibody (AAb) repertoire in serum has been routinely used for many years for the diagnosis of autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma, and lupus. In recent years, AAb profiling of cancers has become a prominent field in oncology research. Protein arrays enable high-throughput screening of clinical samples, characterising the serum profile using low volumes of samples. This chapter describes the use of a protein array comprising 37,200 redundant proteins (containing over 10,000 non-redundant human recombinant proteins) for identification of the proteins bound by the antibodies in human sera using a test set of serum samples. The proteins identified have the potential to be candidate biomarkers. These recombinant proteins are expressed, purified, and robotically spotted on microarrays or chips to facilitate the screening of additional serum samples with the aim of identifying a candidate biomarker or panel of potential biomarkers for applications in disease diagnosis, stage, progression, or response to therapy.