Proteomics in Diagnostics

Over the history of medicine, man has developed effective ways to treat many diseases that he has been presented with. The treatments range from prevention in the form of vaccination to the use of medicines and surgical intervention as cures or even treatments to control the diseases effect on the patients’ quality of life. For many diseases, such as heart disease and cancer, early detection plays a pivotal role in the survival rate of the patient. When detected early, many such lethal diseases can be effectively treated with existing remedies. The difficulty remains, however, how to effectively detect such conditions at the earliest possible stage with a high enough positive predictive value so that they can be treated effectively without overwhelming the medical system with false positive diagnoses. While there are effective markers for diseases such as prostate (i.e. prostate-specific antigen) and ovarian cancer (i.e. cancer-antigen 125), these markers do not possess the sensitivity and specificity necessary to be used as a general screening tool in the diagnosis of early stage prostate and ovarian cancer. What is required is the identification of more effective or additional biomarkers, as well as other types of technologies, that can aid in the diagnosis of early stage diseases. The challenge is how to identify more effective biomarkers or technologies that can provide an earlier