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Unraveling the molecular repertoire of tears as a source of biomarkers: Beyond ocular diseases
Author(s) -
Pieragostino Damiana,
D'Alessandro Michele,
di Ioia Maria,
Di Ilio Carmine,
Sacchetta Paolo,
Del Boccio Piero
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
proteomics – clinical applications
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.948
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1862-8354
pISSN - 1862-8346
DOI - 10.1002/prca.201400084
Subject(s) - biomarker discovery , biomarker , proteomics , tears , metabolomics , omics , medicine , population , computational biology , bioinformatics , biology , immunology , biochemistry , environmental health , gene
Proteomics and metabolomics investigations of body fluids present several challenges for biomarker discovery of several diseases. The search for biomarkers is actually conducted in different body fluids, even if the ideal biomarker can be found in an easily accessible biological fluid, because, if validated, the biomarker could be sought in the healthy population. In this regard, tears could be considered an optimum material obtained by noninvasive procedures. In the past years, the scientific community has become more interested in the study of tears for the research of new biomarkers not only for ocular diseases. In this review, we provide a discussion on the current state of biomarkers research in tears and their relevance for clinical practice, and report the main results of clinical proteomics studies on systemic and eye diseases. We summarize the main methods for tear samples analyses and report recent advances in “omics” platforms for tears investigations. Moreover, we want to take stock of the emerging field of metabolomics and lipidomics as a new and integrated approach to study protein‐metabolites interplay for biomarkers research, where tears represent a still unexplored and attractive field.