Blood Sampling and Preparation Procedures for Proteomic Biomarker Studies of Psychiatric Disorders.

A major challenge in proteomic biomarker discovery and validation for psychiatric diseases is the inherent biological complexity underlying these conditions. There are also many technical issues which hinder this process such as the lack of standardization in sampling, processing and storage of bio-samples in preclinical and clinical settings. This chapter describes a reproducible procedure for sampling blood serum and plasma that is specifically designed for maximizing data quality output in two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, multiplex immunoassay and mass spectrometry profiling studies.