Title

Proteomics and its applications for biomarker discovery in human saliva 

Authors

Hua Xiao¹ & David T Wong^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5*}

Affiliation

¹Dental Research Institute; ²School of Dentistry; ³Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center; ⁴Division of Head and Neck Surgery/Otolaryngology; ⁵Henry Samueli School of Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095 

Email

dtww@ucla.edu

Article Type

Views & Challenges

Date

Received July 02, 2010; Accepted July 14, 2010; Published January 06, 2011
 

Human saliva is a biological fluid with enormous diagnostic potential. Because saliva can be non-invasively collected, it provides an attractive alternative for blood, serum or plasma. It has been postulated that the blood concentrations of many components are reflected in saliva. Saliva harbors a wide array of proteins, which can be informative for the detection of diseases. Profiling the proteins in saliva over the course of disease progression could reveal potential biomarkers indicative of different stages of diseases, which may be useful in medical diagnostics. With advanced instrumentation and developed refined analytical techniques, proteomics is widely envisioned as a useful and powerful approach for salivary proteomic biomarker discovery. As proteomic technologies continue to mature, salivary proteomics have great potential for biomarker research and clinical applications. The progress and current status of salivary proteomics and its application in the biomarker discovery of oral and systematic diseases will be reviewed. The scientific and clinical challenges underlying this approach will also be discussed. 

Keywords

Saliva, Biomarkers, Proteomics 

Citation

Xiao et al. Bioinformation 5(7): 294-296(2011)

Edited by

Francesco chiappelli

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.