Editorial [Hot Topic: Proteome/Protein/Peptide in Molecular Medicine (Guest Editor: John M. Luk)

This special hot-topic issue focuses on 3 “P” words - Proteome, Protein and Peptide, in this fast-discovering field of molecular medicine. Indeed, the volume of indexed publications and relevant successfully filed patents could reflect the importance of the “3Ps” in this topic (see Table 1). The major scope herein is to highlight some novel and innovative molecular and cellular approaches in these “3Ps” for identification of disease biomarkers as diagnostics and development of potential biological therapeutics for the treatment of diseases like cancer and immunological disorders. In the year 2000, the completion of human genome sequence has brought forth a new set of challenges for advancing science and technology. In particular, the emergence of genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics has allowed us to systematically analyze large amount of sequence information and expression profiling data and studying biological systems on a global level. In this context, research on genomics and proteomics can help speed up the drug development process, taking a foothold in every stage of the drug discovery process and in clinical practice, ranging from drug target identification and validation, biomarker discovery and pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics analysis to toxicological studies. Among these disciplines, it becomes increasingly apparent that the proteomics will have a major role in creating a predictive, preventative, and personalized approach to medicine. Proteomics-based approaches have dominated the field, but still have faced many challenges due to technological limitations and biological complexity that were not expected before; more precisely, the detection limit of low-abundance proteins in plasma or sera and the presence of vast numbers of post-translational modified isoforms [1].