Application of Proteomics and Protein Chip Analysis in the Diagnosis of Neurodegenerative Disorders

ABSTRACT

As we face an increase of the adult population suffering from dementia, a typical senile disorder, it is imperative to develop appropriate tools for early detection and differential diagnosis of dementia. Recently, proteomics techniques have been proposed to be used for diagnosis of neurodegenerative disorders by identifying numerous biological markers that are known to increase or decrease in the cerebrospinal fluid or serum of dementic patients. Protein chip analysis, one of the most important techniques of proteomics, is suggested to be useful for examining various modifications of proteins as the high throughput screening method using small volumes of precious samples in a short period. We describe here a list of biological markers, such as A beta, APP, tau, ubiquitin, S100B, soluble IL-6 receptor, beta 2 micoglobulin and prostaglandin E2, proposing that these molecules can be used as biochemical markers of dementia. Therefore, we suggest that the proteomic approaches to analyze the amount and modifications of these proteins might be powerful tools for early detection and differential diagnosis of various neurodegenerative disorders as well as assessment of disease progress.