Microfluidic chips for protein differential expression profiling.

Biomarker discovery and screening using novel proteomic technologies is an area that is attracting increased attention in the biomedical community. Early detection of abnormal physiological conditions will be highly beneficial for diagnosing various diseases and increasing survivability rates. Clearly, progress in this area will depend on the development of fast, reliable, and highly sensitive and specific sample bioanalysis methods. Microfluidics has emerged as a technology that could become essential in proteomics research as it enables the integration of all sample preparation, separation, and detection steps, with the added benefit of enhanced sample throughput. The combination of these advantages with the sensitivity and capability of MS detection to deliver precise structural information makes microfluidics-MS a very competitive technology for biomarker discovery. The integration of LC microchip devices with MS detection, and specifically their applicability to biomarker screening applications in MCF-7 breast cancer cellular extracts is reported in this manuscript. Loading approximately 0.1-1 microg of crude protein extract tryptic digest on the chip has typically resulted in the reliable identification of approximately 40-100 proteins. The potential of an LC-ESI-MS chip for comparative proteomic analysis of isotopically labeled MCF-7 breast cancer cell extracts is explored for the first time.