Overview of Antibody‐Based Technologies for Multiplexed Protein Detection and Quantification and Their Complementarity to Mass Spectrometry‐Based Protein Profiling

Thanks to the advances in instrumentation and data processing, new high-throughput proteomic techniques have been developed to detect and quantify multiple proteins in complex biological samples, thus enhancing the understanding of the molecular mechanisms of a disease condition, and the identification of potential clinical markers for diagnosis and treatment. Besides mass spectrometry (MS), this chapter introduces emerging technologies based on affinity reagents for the capture and detection of specific proteins that are receiving increasing attention in plasma proteomic research due to their complementarity to MS and performance characteristics. In particular, these new techniques can be automated allowing the multiplexing analysis of thousands of proteins rapidly and on large clinical sample sets increasing throughput, sensitivity, and specificity of detection of very low-abundant proteins. Numerous studies in the cardiovascular field demonstrated a significant improvement in the accuracy of disease diagnosis and prognosis or in the identification of potential drug targets, because of the gain in proteome coverage and high sample throughput. Deep plasma proteome profiling could be obtained, facilitating biomarker discovery and disease monitoring and potentially improving future healthcare progression.