Advanced & Next-Gen Proteomics - Medical Director of Cardiology Department, Midwest AMC

An AMC clinician speaks about his research in biomarker discovery and biological pathway elucidation for the purpose of therapy selection. In this stakeholder’s view, next generation proteomics (NGP) is characterized by high throughput, low cost, high plex, and the ability to perform analyses using small sample volumes. Compared to conventional proteomics (namely ELISA and mass spec), NGP is seen as a valuable way to cheaply screen many known proteins for utility as biomarkers. They also comment on drawbacks of NGP technology, and note that it is often still very expensive, and sometimes does not permit quantification of proteins of interest. They are most familiar with Luminex, Olink, SomaLogic, and Meso Scale, and is most satisfied with the former two. In terms of developments for the near future, this stakeholder expects NGP technology to be reserved mostly for research applications, and clinical applications to continue to be dominated by conventional proteomics (e.g., ELISA). Plex level, assay price, sensitivity /specificity, and workflow complexity are major considerations in selecting NGP technologies. A lack of assay validation, as well as complex workflows (testing + sample logistics), were top pain points.

‍