The clinical utility of mass spectrometry based protein assays

Reports of mass spectrometry based assays for peptides and proteins have become increasingly common in the literature. The growing interest of mass spectrometry for use in clinical laboratories has been primarily driven by the inherent selectivity of the platform relative to more traditional platforms such as immunoassays. However, the adoption of mass spectrometry for peptide and protein analysis in the clinic has been relatively slow compared its adoption in non-clinical laboratories such as in biomarker discovery efforts or within laboratories that support pharmaceutical and academic research. Here, we review some of the successful reports of MS based assays for human proteins in multiple stages of assay research, and describe how and why the platform was employed in order to demonstrate where and when mass spectrometry based assays will have value in the future.