Application of proteomic techniques to human tissues

Pathology has evolved over the past 30 years to incorporate molecular analysis of tissue samples for the assessment of disease states. With the advent of molecular pathology has come the development of new technologies to evaluate the tissue specimen at the molecular level. In this review, we will focus on proteomic analysis of human tissues. The importance of tissue preservation as well as the specific isolation of cell populations via microdissection will be addressed. In addition, the molecular evaluation of the tissue specimen with current proteomic techniques, including 2D polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, Western blotting, protein arrays and mass spectrometry, will also be discussed. Finally, two new technologies will be introduced: direct tissue mass spectrometry and layered expression scanning. These new methods maintain the 2D architecture of the tissue throughout the proteomic analysis process, providing additional information that is typically lost with microdissected samples. The challenging application of these new molecular technologies to the analysis of human tissue specimens is essential for the better understanding of diseases.