CE-MS for Clinical Proteomics and Metabolomics: Strategies and Applications

This chapter highlights the potential of capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry (CE-MS) for clinical proteomics and metabolomics studies. CE-MS has been used for the characterization of a wide range of analytes, including (endogenous) metabolites, drug-related compounds and proteins, as well as intact cells and subcellular components (i.e., organelles). The chapter devotes to the use of recently developed CE-MS methodologies relevant to clinical applications as related to proteomics and metabolomics studies. Concerning proteomics, the focus will be on bottom-up proteomics studies (i.e., the analysis of (complex) peptide mixtures obtained after enzymatic digestion of the protein sample) and the profiling of native peptides in biological samples. In general, the CE-MS approaches reported in the chapter offers a promising approach for clinical proteomics and metabolomics notably when used in conjunction with accelerated data workflows for biomarker discovery based on multiplexed separations.