Protein Microarrays and Their Potential Clinical Applications in the Era of Personalized Medicine

Despite the success of DNA microarrays in uncovering gene mutations and gene expression patterns linked to specific diseases, genomic profiling provides little insight into the rapid dynamics of cellular signaling networks with respect to the actual levels, subcellular locations, and functional activities of proteins and their interactions. Such information is essential for a fuller understanding of the molecular events underlying malignant transformation. While much more technologically challenging than oligonucleotide microarrays, in recent years, protein microarrays have also emerged as full-fledged discovery tools for disease biomarkers discovery, as evidenced by an increasing number of studies in which protein microarrays have been employed. In this review, we will highlight some of the recent technological improvements in relation to the two most commonly used types of protein microarrays, i.e., antibody microarrays and reverse-phase protein lysate microarrays. We assess the potential of the future integration of protein microarrays in clinical practices through review of their applications in studies of a wide range of diseases as well as in therapeutic drug discovery efforts. The challenges and outlook of protein microarrays in the era of personalized medicine are also considered.