Degradomics in Biomarker Discovery

The upregulation of protease expression and proteolytic activity is implicated in numerous pathological conditions such as neurodegeneration, cancer, cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases, and bone degeneration. During disease progression, various proteases form characteristic patterns of cleaved proteins and peptides, which can affect disease severity and course of progression. It has been shown that qualitative and quantitative monitoring of cleaved protease substrates can provide relevant prognostic, diagnostic, and therapeutic information. As proteolytic fragments and peptides generated in the affected tissue are commonly translocated to blood, urine, and other proximal fluids, their possible application as biomarkers is the subject of ongoing research. The field of degradomics has been established to enable the global identification of proteolytic events on the organism level, utilizing proteomic approaches and sample preparation techniques that facilitate the detection of proteolytic processing of protease substrates in complex biological samples. In this review, some of the latest developments in degradomic methodologies used for the identification and validation of biologically relevant proteolytic events and their application in the search for clinically relevant biomarker candidates are presented. The current state of degradomics in clinics is discussed and the future perspectives of the field are outlined.