Proteome Profiling by Multidimensional Protein Separation and Automated Lab-on-a-Chip Technology

Technologies and methodologies for proteomic studies often involve a combination of protein fractionation, identification, and quantitation by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS) and in many cases pattern comparison of mass spectra from a complex sample. A common goal of these efforts is the discovery and validation of biomarkers. While current mass spectrometry-based proteomic methods are highly developed and an important component for biomarker discovery, the time required for these methods makes them impractical for screening applications. In addition, current methods of pattern recognition, while capable of the speed required, suffer from a lack of reproducibility, tend to focus on high-abundance proteins, and fail to identify the actual biomarkers. We test here a concept to combine several novel separation approaches for protein fractionation with an automated Lab-on-a-Chip platform and nano LC/MS/MS based technologies to provide a rapid, quantitative proteome profiling method for the serum/plasma proteome. The Lab-on-a-Chip methodology affords high-throughput analysis combined with reproducible sizing and quantitation, making it a potentially powerful and enabling technology to rapidly compare the proteomes of multiple samples in a wide variety of applications. Proteome Profiling by Multidimensional Protein Separation and Automated Lab-on-a-Chip Technology Application