Morphoproteomics

Morphoproteomics is a novel medical discipline that combines histopathology, molecular and cellular biology and protein biochemistry to define the protein circuitry in diseased cells. In this way it should be possible to identify specific target for customized therapeutic intervention. One preclinical study on prostate cancer overlaps data from phosphorylation analysis with phospho-specific probes and morphological evaluation of cellular compartmentalization. The identification of peculiar localization of certain phospho-analytes demonstrated the efficacy of this kind of personalized studies and their clinical utility. Another study demonstrated the feasibility of this approach in neck and head squamous carcinoma, that often has poor prognosis and high mortality rate. In this case, mTOR pathway was analyzed in terms of potential clinical significance of its activated components. Rapamycin is an inhibitor of this pathway. The inhibitory effects on cellular growth were directly correlated with mTOR activation, and a paint of the block was obtained by immuno-hystochemistry. On conclusion, morphoproteomics gives details about the signal transduction by using the combination of several techniques. This approach has been positively evaluated in certain disease, like cancer where an alteration in protein circuitry often causes the disease. Other pathological model would be available soon to validate this approach also in other disease.