Plasma Proteomics

Maria Pernemalm and Rolf Lewensohn.

The plasma proteome has long been seen as one of the clinically most interesting proteomes. This is due to several aspects of plasma including easy (non-invasive) sampling and presence of leakage products from other tissues. However, plasma has shown to be a challenging proteome to work with, mainly due to its high dynamic range of concentrations spanning from low pg/ml (cytokines) to high mg/ml (albumin). In addition, plasma is constantly changing due to the filtration in the kidneys, so in reality biomarkers are not only present in low concentrations, but also in a limited time window. To overcome these challenges we are developing new methods and approaches for plasma biomarker discovery. The project includes development of plasma pre fractionation for SELDI-TOF-MS, as well as shotgun approaches including LC-MALDI MS/MS. As a part of the plasma proteomics project we are also collecting plasma together with the thorax clinic (see lung cancer project) to create high quality biobank, containing well defined samples prepared with standardized methods.

Last updated: 2008-01-10