Phosphoproteomics as a Promising Tool for Broadening the Analysis of Clinical Samples and for the Fight Against Cancer Disease

Proteomic approaches posses a huge potential in understanding diseases such as cancer. These analyses rely on the extraction of proteins from clinical specimens and their subsequent enzymatic digestion in peptides prior to mass spectrometric analysis. The characterisation of chosen subproteomes – like phosphoproteome – which are rich reservoirs of potential biomarkers for disease, requires much more sophisticated procedures due to the additional phosphoproteomic sample preparation steps. The addition of sophisticated analytical procedures is mandatory but make the parallel processing of clinical samples prone to plenty of errors and, thus compromise the reproducibility needed for confident comparative high-throughput studies. The presented review focuses on relevant developments in the phosphoproteomic field that could, in the near future, facilitate the rapid discovery of tumour biomarkers or new drug targets for cancer treatment. In terms of methodological advances, the enrichment of phosphoproteins and mass spectrometry detection of peptides will be especially highlighted. The discussion part will also contribute to new areas of interest for scientists that are investigating phosphoproteins.