The Clinical & Translational Omics Symposium 2023 was held in Protaras on November 4-5th, 2023 It brought together researchers from the fields of Omics, including proteomics, metabolomics, and lipidomics, along with experts in bioinformatics and the application of artificial intelligence. These experts played a crucial in translating omics findings into clinical research and practice. We spoke with one of the leading international experts in the area of clinical proteomics, Dr. Jennifer Van Eyk Director of Basic Science Research at the Barbra Streisand Women's Heart Center, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, USA.

Could you explain, in simple terms, how advancements in clinical proteomics impact medical treatments and patient care?

Let’s first say a few words about Omics, in general. Lots of people don't know what proteomics is, although almost everyone does know what their genome.
The genome, or your DNA, can be thought of as a city map. If you had a map showing only the highways, streets and buildings, that's your genome. But, if you add to the map the roads and highways, with everybody's walking around, and the cars that are coming and going, then this dynamic city is the proteome. If you have an accident on one of your highways, then you have first responders come. That's how your proteins work inside the cells, they respond and change when you have a disease. So the proteome can be thought of as a highly responsive. That's really how proteins work – they are what brings the ‘city’ alive.

In proteomics we try to measure all proteins and also their cellular location and activity. Of course, we are not able to do everything. We wish we could, and that is why technology becomes so important. Today, the technology challenge is sensitivity. Trying to see a protein in a cell, is like sit on the rings of Saturn and look down into a room and figure out who is wearing glasses and who is not. It gets more complicated because if I look today and you're wearing a blue suit with glasses, but tomorrow, you might be wearing a brown suit with sunglasses. Proteins are like that, they can change. That's why it's so hard but it is what makes the “city” alive and proteins is what makes each one of us alive.

To come back to your question. How proteomics impact medical diagnostic and treatments – well, proteomics is impacing both sides. Proteomics helps to determine if you're sick, and it can tells you how you're going to respond to a drug. It will also tell you what your chances of survival are.

Today, you can take a little finger prick of blood, wick it up, and mail it to us for analysis using proteomics. Then, based on the proteomic we can tell how your are progressing over time. You don't have to go see your doctor. You can collect your blood sample anywhere; at home or if you're on vacation, or in a remote part of the world. As a consumer this will give you an ability to track your health and your wellness.

How might these advancements influence or benefit businesses in the healthcare sector or related industries?

There are lots of opportunities – from being able to help consumers to directly track their health, reduce the cost within a hospital or the medical system and help develop new drugs that you need. Based on remote blood sampling devices, maybe you can see how this technology can be combined with telehealth to reduce the cost of health care while providing better health service. It can mean that when you're doing drug trials, instead of having everyone come in physically to have a blood samples taken, the person can do it from home. Today it is normal in drug trials that the whole population is not represented, instead only a certain demographics are. Now with remote blood sampling devices, we can reduce that barrier, and have results from even populations that are rare, from different backgrounds.

Over the next 10 years, doctors and pharmacies will start to see proteomics impact diagnostics and availability of drugs. They may not see it in an everyday practice, but it is and will continue to happen. For business professionals, it will be important to understand in order to invest in proteomics and the diagnostics and drugs that come from proteomic research. This means that we need to have educational or awareness-building initiatives would you recommend bridging the knowledge gap in proteomics and its business applications?

Education is fundamental. It is important to science education throughout school including high school students come and work in people's labs. Science needs to be there discussed in every part of life. It is also important to allow opportunities to ask questions in both directions. Professionals on the investment side need to be able to ask questions so that they know where to invest. They should have the possibility to talk to scientists. As well, scientists should able to ask business professionals how to move an idea to a commercial produce. This needs to be a continuous discussion.

Science technology moves so quickly. Today what is possible to do in research or what the new instrument and technologies, 10-15 years ago might have sounded as though they were part of a fantasy movie? It is sometime unbelievable how fast science and proteomic technology is moving. For example, we have this great study, it is called Molecular Twin.

In Molecular Twin, we have started with pancreatic cancer and measured all of the omics including the proteome of blood and the tumor. It turned out measuring specific proteins in plasma can tell you how will have cancer return (reoccurance). This can be used to determine when compared to others with pancreatic cancer what were successful treatment and help develop new drugs.

Our goal of developing diagnostics is that every time a physician has to make a decision, or every time a patient has to make a decision, there is a diagnostic that can provide quantitative data to help with that decision making. Having a diagnostic that allows you not to just guess, which is horrible, but to give you a information that is specific to you. That is precision medicine. This is what inspires me the most – it’s challenging but it could change the medicine.

Jennifer Van Eyk, PhD, is an international leader in the area of clinical proteomics. Her lab has focused on developing technical pipelines for de novo discovery and larger-scale quantitative mass spectrometry methods. This includes multiple reaction monitoring (MRM, also known as SRM) and, most recently, data-independent acquisition. Dr. Van Eyk's laboratory is well known for the extreme technical quality of the data generated, rigorous quality control with tight % CV while applying these to key clinical questions. The aim is to maximize throughput and reproducibility. This will facilitate the transition of targeted and robust discovery methods into large-scale assessments of healthy populations and clinical-grade assays, focusing on brain and cardiovascular diseases.