Proteomics in Multiple Sclerosis: The Perspective of the Clinician

Abstract

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the inflammatory demyelinating and neurodegenerative disease of the central nervous system (CNS) that affects approximately 2.8 million people worldwide. In the last decade, a new era was heralded in by a new phenotypic classification, a new diagnostic protocol and the first ever therapeutic guideline, making personalized medicine the aim of MS management. However, despite this great evolution, there are still many aspects of the disease that are unknown and need to be further researched. A hallmark of these research are molecular biomarkers that could help in the diagnosis, differential diagnosis, therapy and prognosis of the disease. Proteomics, a rapidly evolving discipline of molecular biology may fulfill this dire need for the discovery of molecular biomarkers. In this review, we aimed to give a comprehensive summary on the utility of proteomics in the field of MS research. We reviewed the published results of the method in case of the pathogenesis of the disease and for biomarkers of diagnosis, differential diagnosis, conversion of disease courses, disease activity, progression and immunological therapy. We found proteomics to be a highly effective emerging tool that has been providing important findings in the research of MS.

Keywords: biomarker; conversion; disease activity; disease modifying therapy; multiple sclerosis; pathogenesis; progression; proteomics.

Figure 1

The schematic interpretation of the pathological processes behind multiple sclerosis. Created with BioRender.com—accessed on 25 April 2022.

Figure 2

Application of different proteomics technologies. ELISA, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), ICAT, Isotope-coded affinity tag labeling; SILAC, stable isotope labeling with amino acids in cell culture; NMR spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.