Review Article Advantageous Uses of Mass Spectrometry for the �uanti�cation of �roteins

Copyright © 2013 John E. Hale.is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Quantitative protein measurements by mass spectrometry have gained wide acceptance in research settings. However, clinical uptake of mass spectrometric protein assays has not followed suit. In part, this is due to the long-standing acceptance by regulatory agencies of immunological assays such as ELISA assays. In most cases, ELISAs provide highly accurate, sensitive, relatively inexpensive, and simple assays for many analytes. e barrier to acceptance of mass spectrometry in these situations will remain high. However, mass spectrometry provides solutions to certain protein measurements that are difficult, if not impossible, to accomplish by immunological methods. Cases where mass spectrometry can provide solutions to difficult assay development include distinguishing between very closely related protein species and monitoring biological and analytical variability due to sample handling and very high multiplexing capacity. is paper will highlight several examples where mass spectrometry has made certain protein measurements possible where immunological techniques have had a great difficulty. 1