Role of proteomics in personalized medicine

Medicine is at the threshold of major shift in the care of patients. Personalized molecular portraits of patient disease processes will provide unparalleled access to the molecular descriptors of disease and delineate targets for therapeutic intervention. Protein microarrays will be a key initial technology as the transition into laboratory molecular profiling is made. Significant collaboration between diverse medical specialties, hospital administrators, insurers and government is required to move beyond visionary thinking and into actual profiling of patient specimens as part of a personalized medicine assessment.