Proteomics in Cancer Research and Diagnosis; An Update

The availability of reference genomes for, amongst others, man and mouse, coupled with the ability to manipulate the expression of single genes/proteins in model organisms, has fuelled a revolution in biomedical research. Non-invasive diagnosis and treatment, disease prediction and personalised medicine are all expected developments to result from the genomics revolution. Building on this resource, we are now able to employ high-throughput techniques for profiling the expression of thousands of genes/proteins in tissues, body fluids and even individual cells and have evolved a whole new science-systems biology that seeks to reveal the biological information in such data-rich studies. Given that proteins are the ultimate biological effectors within the cell and, due to various post-translational regulatory steps, are more varied and numerous than the protein-encoding genes, researchers are increasingly progressing from genome and gene transcript analyses to powerful proteomics techniques that offer a more complete picture of cell behaviour. Cancer research and clinical oncology, in particular, have been at the forefront in adapting and exploiting the new biology. The road map to cancer is being described for many individual cancers, tumours are profiled for prognostic and therapeutic purposes and biomarkers are sought to help with early diagnosis and disease monitoring. This review will focus on proteomics and its application to cancer research and diagnosis.