Proteomics in human disease: awareness of new biomedical opportunities

Recent advances in biomedical technology have facilitated global analysis of cellular proteins and are termed as "proteomics". Proteomics has become the key area of research in biomedicine and microbiology which uses meticulous and sophisticated techniques including two-dimensional acrylamid gel electrophoresis, mass spectrometry and bio-informatic databases. Proteomics is rapidly growing into post-genomic era in biomedical investigations. Its base lies on structural, physical, functional and other bio-characteristics of proteins and its application provides great opportunity to clarify the action of various pathogenetic agents. It will identify new diagnostic methods, new diagnostic markers of disease, new therapeutic agents, as well as protein candidates for vaccines. Application of this phenomenon expands from basic research, to clinical applications such as drug development, control of infectious diseases, cancer, neuropathology and cardiovascular diseases

Gastric dysplasia

A worldwide-accepted histologic, classification of the gastric carcinomatous and precancerous lesions is a prerequisite for a consistent recording of epidemiologic data and for both developing and evaluating primary and secondary preventive efforts. Different nomenclatures have been proposed for gastric precancerous lesions in eastern countries and in Japan. This article presents a classification of gastric precancerous lesions resulting from an international consensus conference involving pathologists of different countries. Five main diagnostic categories are identified. To allow comparisons with the nomenclature proposed by the Japanese Research Society for Gastric Cancer, each category was also assigned a numeric identification: 1 = normal, 2 = indefinite for dysplasia, 3 = noninvasive neoplasia, 4 = suspicious for invasive cancer, and 5 = cancer. The interobserver reproducibility of the histologic classification was tested in a series of 46 cases. By collapsing benign alterations [categories 1+2] versus noninvasive neoplasia [category 3] versus suspicious for invasive cancer and fully appearing carcinomatous lesions [categories 4+5], the general agreement value was 77.7%, whereas kappa coefficient was 0.63. By examining gastric precancerous lesions from diverse populations, the authors agreed that the gastric precancerous process is universal and the differences in nomenclatures are merely semantics. The international Padova classification of the gastric precancerous lesions is submitted to the attention of the international scientific community, which is invited to test and to improve on it