Proteomics: How big data opens new vistas in personalized medicine

"Innovations, Information, and Imaging" is the theme of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS 2015), which takes place in San Jose Feb. 12 - 16. Along with international research partners, the Technische Universität München has organized a symposium on proteomics, a research field that will open the stage for a more personalized approach in biomedical research and therapy.

Proteins are the building blocks that determine biological structures and functions in all living organisms, making life work: they shape cells, define a cell's metabolism, act as transporters within cells, transmit signals from cell to cell, and bear the crucial information that makes the difference between a heart and a brain.

In this symposium we will discuss the first draft of the human proteome with more than 18,000 mapped proteins - and how this information can be used to understand the flow of biological information from genes to functions. To understand how diseases form and how they might be cured, modern proteomics also addresses the question of how proteins are spatially distributed in normal tissues and in different types of cancer.

Furthermore, the symposium will look at what promises big data holds for personalized medicine. Recent advances in the medical sciences require technology platforms that can deliver on all dimensions of this big data: A foundation that can converge various data sources, - clinical, biological, and lifestyle - while providing predictive and prescriptive real-time insights is necessary to make more breakthroughs possible.

Provided by Technical University Munich