Depression

epression—unipolar depression, clinical depres-sion, or major depressive disorder (MDD)—is a severe neuropsychiatric disorder that affects 350 million diag-nosed patients and their families worldwide. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimates that 60% of people who commit suicide have MDD or another mood disorder in the USA. Additionally, the World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that by 2030, MDD will be the leading cause of global disability.1 Most alarming is the fact that the main strategy of MDD man-agement, which is antidepressant medication, shows only modest efficacy: 40 % of patients do not respond to cur-rent treatments and often experience undesirable side effects.2 Moreover, medication response is lengthy, with high rates of relapse and treatment resistance.3 MDD’s underlying molecular mechanisms are still to be unraveled. Novel technologies such as omics-based platforms may offer new insights into the pathobiologic core of MDD, as well as the possibility of discovering potential diagnostic, therapeutic, and disease course bio-marker candidates.4 Proteomics Proteomics is the science that emerged from the term “proteome,”5 which can be defined as the set o