Research Paper Volume 9, Issue 10 pp 2098—2116

Figure 14. mRNA levels do not correlate with protein levels, creating a bottle-neck for protein biomarker discovery. (A) Concordance between mRNA and protein is actually quite variable and completely unpredictable, ranging anywhere between 0 and 100%. This discordance between mRNA and protein expression levels ultimately makes it very difficult or nearly impossible, to use transcriptional profiling data for the development of new protein biomarkers as companion diagnostics. (B) Our new “Proteomics-to-Genomics (PTG)” strategy provides a simple straightforward solution to this practical problem. By starting out with proteomics data first and then integrating it with existing transcriptional profiling data, this allows one to quickly identify and select a sub-set of genes, with tight correlations, nearing 100%. It essentially allows one to “work-backwards”, providing a much needed systematic “short-cut” to protein biomarker discovery.