Proteomics: A groundbreaking development in cancer biology

Proteins are the basic unit of any living organism. Proteins are comprised of a variety of amino acids that drive the structure, stability, and function of proteins. Proteins are the ultimate product of most of the genes. Protein levels are known to better reflect the cellular regulatory processes within cells than gene levels. As they are actively involved in the regulation of various signaling pathways, proteins are known to have a significant contribution to various diseases, particularly cancer, that is supposed to be common because of the aberrant activation of a number of signaling pathways regulated by proteins. Therefore, a branch of omics called proteomics is used to detect, identify, and monitor these diseases, especially cancer. The proteomic technologies are of various categories such as enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), protein microarray, matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI), mass spectrometry etc. The data generated from these techniques are then analyzed by data mining and interpretation. Proteomics in general has become a breakthrough technique to discover proteins that might benefit us in early detection and biomarker discovery to detect tumor aggressiveness in cancer. As cancer has been the leading cause of mortality, proteomics techniques help us to detect the differential expression and also to elucidate novel targets in cancer.