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Updated: Jan 10, 2026
Large Scale Non-targeted Metabolomic Profiling of Serum by Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry UPLC-MS
Published on: March 14, 2013
Plasma vs. serum: which is better for proteomic blood biomarker analysis? Evaluation of the novel NULISA platform
Marissa F Farinas1,2,3, Yijun Chen4, Xuemei Zeng1,2,3
1Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, 3811 O'Hara Street, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA.
Introduction:
The NULISASeq™ CNS Disease Panel has high potential for AD diagnosis, but the comparability of serum vs. plasma remains unclear.
Methods:
We compared its performance on 43 matched serum-plasma pairs from a memory clinic cohort.
Results:
The panel reproducibly quantified 124 targets (mean CV=4.9%) with high detectability (mean=95.7%). Serum-plasma correlations were strong (ρ>0.7) for 79 targets. 48 targets had significant NPQ differences, with 32 higher in plasma. Plasma had more erythrocyte-enriched proteins (HBA1, PGK1, SOD1, PRDX6), while serum had more platelet-derived proteins (CD40LG, BDNF, VEGFA, Aβ40). For classical AD biomarkers, serum-plasma correlations were stronger for p-tau, GFAP, and NfL (ρ>0.9) than for Aβ targets (ρ=0.594-0.785). Tau levels were higher in plasma; GFAP and NfL were similar, and Aβ peptides were mixed. Twelve targets, along with p-tau217/Aβ42, were linked to AD diagnosis, with plasma generally showing stronger effects.
Discussion:
Our results support serum use but suggest plasma performs better for AD using this panel.
