Proteomics and the search for biomarkers of female reproductive diseases

Abstract

Over the past decade, high-throughput proteomics technologies have evolved considerably and have become increasingly more commonly applied to the investigation of female reproductive diseases. Proteomic approaches facilitate the identification of new disease biomarkers by comparing the abundance of hundreds of proteins simultaneously to find those specific to a particular clinical condition. Some of the best studied areas of female reproductive biology applying proteomics include gynaecological cancers, endometriosis and endometrial infertility. This review will discuss the progress that has been made in these areas and will highlight some of the emerging technologies that promise to contribute to better understanding of the female reproductive disease.

Power of Proteomics in Linking Oxidative Stress and Female Infertility

“…In this era of proteomics, it is important that proteomic experiments are reproducible from one lab to the other. Standard procedures for sample collection, handling, storage, and analysis need to be adopted, as they will be important for identification of biomarkers in disease development and progression [44]. …”

“…Numerous studies have been conducted on endometrial tissue and secretions, endometrial receptivity, ovaries, uterine fluid, follicular fluid, peritoneal fluid, plasma, endometriotic tissue, and tissues from PCOS patients [8, 13, 31, 46–48]. However, the collection of reproductive samples is a challenge as some of the samples have to be obtained invasively [44]. The bigger challenge is the analysis of the diverse microenvironments since they not only contain proteins of interest, but also growth factors, inflammatory factors, different cells, and several biological molecules.…”

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“…10 Performing proteomic studies directly in the peripheral blood is an obvious shortcut to the discovery of new serum analytes that may be consistently altered in women with endometriosis. 12 However, this strategy is more vulnerable to noise from abundant serum proteins that mask the proteins of interest, 13 and has not yet revealed protein markers with diagnostic utility in endometriosis.…”

Serum interleukin-8, CA-125 levels, neutrophil to lymphocyte ratios and combined markers in the diagnosis of endometriosis

“…Many new biological markers have been described in the serum, peritoneal fluid (PF), urine, and endometrial tissue, but they are still in the early stages of development, and no validation trials have been carried out to assess their use as reliable means of diagnosing endometriosis in a clinical setting (3). Therefore, researchers are now returning to combinations of known biochemical markers and advanced statistical analysis to predict cases of endometriosis (4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9).…”