Implementation of Proteomics for Cancer Research: Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

Cancer is the leading cause of the death, accounts for about 13% of all annual deaths worldwide. Manydifferent fields of science are collaborating together studying cancer to improve our knowledge of this lethaldisease, and find better solutions for diagnosis and treatment. Proteomics is one of the most recent and rapidlygrowing areas in molecular biology that helps understanding cancer from an omics data analysis point of view.The human proteome project was officially initiated in 2008. Proteomics enables the scientists to interrogate avariety of biospecimens for their protein contents and measure the concentrations of these proteins. Currentnecessary equipment and technologies for cancer proteomics are mass spectrometry, protein microarrays,nanotechnology and bioinformatics. In this paper, we provide a brief review on proteomics and its application incancer research. After a brief introduction including its definition, we summarize the history of major previouswork conducted by researchers, followed by an overview on the role of proteomics in cancer studies. We alsoprovide a list of different utilities in cancer proteomics and investigate their advantages and shortcomings fromtheoretical and practical angles. Finally, we explore some of the main challenges and conclude the paper withfuture directions in this field.