Monday, April 15, 2013
Clinical Proteomic Technologies Initiative for Cancer Animated Video Tutorial
Despite recent progress, cancer takes more than a half million American lives each year. In many of these cases, we lost the battle because we detected the enemy far too late. In this feature presentation on Proteomic Technologies and Cancer, we will take a close look at how scientists and physicians are working to identify clinical biomarkers – the molecular signatures that indicate the presence of cancer. These signatures, made up of proteins and other molecules found in patient samples such as blood, will usher in a new approach to medicine based on early detection, and rapid response.
The identification of proteins associated with cancer in the patient will enable us to diagnose and provide treatment even before clinical symptoms appear. The sooner we find the disease, and the sooner we treat it, the greater our chances will be in providing a cure, or enabling the patient to live a longer, productive life. Reading the molecular signatures of cancer could also guide us toward the right combination of therapies that are appropriate to each individual, opening the door to personalized cancer treatment.
But the benefits of this approach will not be realized until we improve the set of advanced technologies used to identify proteins found in patient samples. This set of technologies is called Proteomics. Proteomics is the identification and characterization of the many hundreds of thousands of proteins expressed in an organism or cell type at a given time.
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