The Analytical Scientist: The Proteomics of Precision With Jennifer Van Eyk, PhD
The Analytical Scientist recently interviewed Jennifer Van Eyk, PhD, the Erika J. Glazer Chair in Women’s Heart Health at Cedars-Sinai and director of the Advanced Clinical Biosystems Research Institute, about how single-cell proteomics—the study of proteins in individual cells—is bringing precision medicine closer to clinical reality, especially for women’s heart health.
Van Eyk, director of Basic Science Research in the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center, told The Analytical Scientist that her lab focuses on women’s heart disease, which can differ from heart disease in men—differences that have not always received adequate research or attention.
More broadly, Van Eyk and her team are working to individualize healthcare by building reliable pipelines that run from discovery to patient diagnostics and treatments. She offered one example: an automated workflow that takes her team from the discovery phase—identifying candidate biomarkers, the measurable indicators of a biological state or disease—to targeted lab tests that can be used with large populations.
A similar approach supports cell-based drug trials and single-cell studies, where thousands of cells are analyzed individually.
“Only in the last few years has it been feasible to take the smallest of samples (a single cell) and obtain quantitative proteomic data,” Van Eyk said. “It is a truly remarkable technical feat.”
For proteomics to broadly advance precision medicine, methods must become easier to use while remaining reliable, Van Eyk said.
“This democratization of proteomics will both expand its use, but, importantly, it will also help ensure that data obtained around the world can be harmonized,” she said. “This is essential.”
Read the complete article from The Analytical Scientist.