Fixing Proteomics Campaign

Nature editorial says reproducibility is the key issue for Proteomics

10 June 2008

In a recent editorial in Nature they point out some of the reproducibility problems Proteomics has suffered from:

...many studies involving mass-spectrometry profiling have proved difficult to reproduce. And the field has so far largely failed to deliver the disease-tracking biomarkers on which these early efforts were sold. There are few examples of clear, clinically proven benefits.

They also note that the work being done for the HUPO Reproducibility Study is a big step to improving things:

The Human Proteome Organisation (HUPO) has taken some praiseworthy steps towards resolving these issues with, for example, a project to show that different labs can now produce identical results from the same sample. With the rapid evolution of proteomic techniques, the field's reputation and utility is likely to pick up. But HUPO - and the proteomics community - still has a lot to prove and a successful Human Proteome Project is its chance to prove it.