Proteomics Applications in Health: Biomarker and Drug Discovery and Food Industry

Abstract

Advancing in genome sequencing has greatly propelled the understanding of the living world; however, it is insufficient for full description of a biological system. Focusing on proteomics has emerged as another large-scale platform for improving the understanding of biology. Proteomic experiments can be used for different aspects of clinical and health sciences such as food technology, biomarker discovery and drug target identification. Since proteins are main constituents of foods, proteomic technology can monitor and characterize protein content of foods and their change during production process. The proteomic biomarker discovery is advanced in various diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, AIDS, and renal diseases which provide non-invasive methods by the use of body fluids such as urine and serum. Proteomics is also used in drug target identification using different approaches such as chemical proteomics and protein interaction networks. The development and application of proteomics has increased tremendously over the last decade. Advances in proteomics methods offer many promising new directions of studying in clinical fields. In this regard, we want to discuss proteomics technology application in food investigations, drug, and biomarker discovery.

Keywords: Biomarker; Drug discovery; Foodomics; Proteome profiling; Proteomics.

Figure 1

Different steps of new biomarker development. Majority of methods for analysis of disease- specific biomarkers are based on mass spectrometry (MS). Variety of separation methods including liquid chromatography (LC), electrophoresis (E), two-dimensional electrophoresis-MS (2DE-MS), 2D-polyacrilamid gel electrophoresis-MS (2D-PAGE-MS), matrix- assisted laser desorption/ionization- time of flight-MS (MALDI-TOF-MS), surface- enhanced laser desorption/ionization-TOF-MS (SELDI-TOF-MS), LC-MS/MS, Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance- MS (FTICR-MS), multiple reaction monitoring/ selected reaction monitoring (MRM/SRM) in combination with MS use in discovery step of biomarker identification process. In validation step, several techniques such as enzyme- linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), arrays, MRM/SRM, western blot (WB) and immune histochemistry (IHC) can be used (91, 92).

Figure 2

Ideal biomarkers features. The ideal biomarker should have high specificity for a certain disease condition. Proteomics technology is powerful tool for biomarker discovery through characterization and evaluation of global profiling of proteins under given state

Figure 3

Drug discovery process. Proteomics technology by protein analysis (global protein profiling, protein- protein interaction profiling, PTMs profiling and chemo-proteomics) contributes in different steps of drug discovery process that shown with red color

Figure 4

Comparison of activity-based probe profiling and compound-centric chemical proteomics

Figure 5

Use of proteomics in the development pathway for food production, and assessing food safety, originality and quality (Dajana et al., 2010)