“Softer” Mass Spec Techniques Gain Advantage in Biomarker Discovery

Through its traditional techniques MS has struggled to elucidate tissue molecular distribution related to disease state. In recent years, MS imaging, including MALDI and DESI imaging, has seen significant application in proteomic biomarker discovery with its distinct advantages in preservation of spatial proteomic data and potential to improve assay reproducibility.

In MALDI and DESI, nondestructive techniques are utilized with soft ionization sources to desorb and ionize surface molecules for MS analysis. According to Kalorama, one of the key strengths of MALDI and DESI is that they avoid traditional tissue sample preparation, a tedious front-end process that presents a significant bottleneck in proteomics where differential analysis is used to compare protein expression and abundance between samples. Proteolytic digestion and other sample preparation procedures remove significant analytical context value related to protein spatial distribution and concentration.

Kalorama believes that a number of studies have cemented the reputation of these MS technologies. Researchers have noted the novelty of MALDI imaging of tissue (introduced in 1997) to discover proteins otherwise difficult to separate by electrophoresis or hidden in shotgun proteomic processes that are biased towards higher-mass proteins. Recent studies have used MALDI imaging to discover several biomarkers associated with gastric cancer survival prognosis, forms of ovarian cancer, and to develop a novel grading system for papillary non-invasive bladder cancer.

Kalorama’s report contains breakouts of the market by type of technology used and application. It profiles companies and surveys partnerships and deals related to proteomics.

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Kalorama Information
Proteomics Markets for Research and IVD Applications, report