Figure 1

Proteomic hindrances for discovery of true candidate biomarkers. This figure illustrates, in a simple manner, relevant discovery aspects of true candidate biomarkers. Points to be considered are: (a) technological and biological variability within/across proteomic platforms; (b) suitable/unsuitable biospecimen collection, handling, storage and processing; (c) capacity/incapacity of credentialing biomarker candidates prior to costly and time-consuming clinical qualification studies using well-established methodologies; (d) the necessity for knowledge in the evaluation criteria required for these distinct processes in the pipeline and in regulatory science by the research community; (e) insufficient publicly available high-quality reagents and data sets to the cancer research community; (f) need for improved data analysis tools for the analysis, characterization, and comparison of large datasets and multi-dimensional data; and (g) necessity for proper experimental study design when performing studies involving clinical samples in biomarker studies. This implies a network-connectivity in relation to: (h) ensuring the choice of the correct strategy, (i) conclusion of the clinical proteomic research study when reaching a reprensative number of patients in order to achieve reliable data, (j) to always carry out inter- and intra-assays of your sample-preparations in order to reproduce your data, (k) to combine different OMIC-Tools to complement and verify the efficiency of your results, (l) Collaboration between clinicians and expert OMIC-scientists is necessary for succeess.