Translational bottlenecks in blood-based proteomics

Blood-based proteomics has entered a phase of unprecedented analytical capability and expanded utility outside of the proteomics community. Advances in high-resolution mass spectrometry, affinity-based platforms, and data processing now enable the measurement and analysis of thousands of circulating proteins across large cohorts with increasing precision and scale (Eldjarn et al, 2023 ; Kirsher et al, 2025 ). Population-scale initiatives such as the UK Biobank (Koprulu et al, 2026 ) have demonstrated that proteome-wide profiling can be deployed reproducibly across tens of thousands of deeply phenotyped individuals. At the same time, minimal invasiveness and the ability for longitudinal sampling enable dynamic profiling of serum, plasma, and extracellular vesicles, supporting screening and risk prediction, early disease detection, therapeutic monitoring, patient stratification, and causal inference in drug development (Zhou et al, 2019 ; Bader et al, 2023 ). In therapeutic contexts, proteomics offers actionable readouts of efficacy and safety, informs companion diagnostics, and clarifies mechanisms of action. Patient-centric microsampling approaches, including dried blood spots, further enable decentralized, repeatable collection, expanding access to liquid biopsy material and improving inclusion of vulnerable populations (Shen et al, 2024 ).