Biomarkers of disease and post-mortem changes - Heat stabilization, a necessary tool for measurement of protein regulation

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Published: 2011-06-29

Formatted citation

Kultima K, Sköld K, Borén M.. Biomarkers of disease and post-mortem changes - Heat stabilization, a necessary tool for measurement of protein regulation.
J Proteomics. (2011). DOI: 10.1016/j.jprot.2011.06.009

Abstract

This review focuses on post sampling changes and how the Stabilizor system has been used to control this natural biological process and potential implications on cancer-specific biomarkers due to post sampling changes. Tissue sampling is a major traumatic event that can have drastic effects within a very short timeframe at the molecular level [1] resulting in loss of sample quality due to post-mortem changes. A heat-stabilization technology, using the Stabilizor system, has been developed to quickly and permanently abolish the enzymatic activity that causes these changes post-sampling and so preserve sample quality. The Stabilizor system has been shown to give better sample quality when analyzing a variety of tissues in various proteomic workflows. In this paper we discuss the impact of using heat-stabilized tissue in different proteomic applications. Based on our observations regarding the overlap between commonly changing proteins and proteins found to change post-mortem we also highlight a group of proteins of particular interest in cancer studies.