High-Throughput Chromatography for Clinical Proteomics Applications

It is becoming increasingly important to use high-throughput analysis of clinical samples to monitor the progression or regression of disease or the concentration of therapeutic agents during personalized treatment. The use of micro and capillary chromatography is well established, but nano-LC can provide significantly higher sensitivity, especially for analyzing therapeutic monoclonal antibodies. Although the nano-LC has been considered a slow procedure, new separation columns, for example, monolithic columns, can provide both high sample throughput and high sensitivity. When hyphenated with a high-end mass spectrometer, the combination can be used for screening and targeted analyses of clinical samples. Furthermore, a combination of different, orthogonal separation methods can be used to increase the selectivity and sensitivity of the analysis. Some actual research and applied topics for clinical sample analyses will be discussed.