Improving Biomarker Identification with Better Designs and Reporting

An interesting and potentially useful approach to bio-marker identification was recently reported by Reddy et al. in the journal Cell (1). Using a combinatorial library of synthetic “shape ” molecules, they screened for ligands that bind antibodies in the serum of indi-viduals with the target condition but that do not bind antibodies in the serum of individuals without the tar-get condition. When this approach was investigated with 2 mice immunized with myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG)3 (which then developed a syn-drome resembling human multiple sclerosis) and 2 mice not immunized with MOG, the investigators identified 3 peptoids that subsequently discriminated perfectly between new sets ofmice—7 immunizedwith MOG and 7 not immunized with MOG. This resul