Fredrik Nyberg, Gyorgy Marko-Varga, Atsushi Ogiwara and colleagues at AstraZeneca’s research and development center in Molndal, Sweden, note cancer therapy already is moving toward individualized treatments selected according to tumor cell type and patients’ predicted responses to different kinds of anti-cancer drugs.

The researchers have developed a system of state-of-the-art proteomic profiling, in which blood tests are used to analyze single proteins and multiple “fingerprint” protein patterns, including proteins that can serve as biomarkers for disease.

The aim is to create a “tool kit” that physicians could use in everyday medicine, including rapid methods for identifying proteins in the blood and processing the resulting data.

The project is presented in the current issue of the Journal of Proteome Research.