The importance of protein profiling in the diagnosis and treatment of hematologic malignancies

Proteins are important targets in cancer research because malignancy is associated with defects in cell protein machinery. Protein profiling is an emerging independent subspecialty of proteomics that is rapidly expanding and providing unprecedented insight into biological events. Quantitative assessment of protein levels in hematologic malignancies seeks a comprehensive understanding of leukemia-associated protein patterns for use in aiding diagnosis, follow-up treatment, and the prediction of clinical outcomes. Many recently developed high-throughput proteomic methods can be applied to protein profiling. Herein the importance of protein profiling, its exploitation in leukemia research, and its clinical usefulness in the treatment and diagnosis of various cancer types, and techniques for determining changes in protein profiling are reviewed.