Use of high density antibody arrays to validate and discover cancer serum biomarkers

Perhaps the greatest barrier to translation of serum biomarker discoveries is the inability to evaluate putative biomarkers in high throughput validation studies. Here we report on the development, production, and implementation of a high-density antibody microarray used to evaluate large numbers of candidate ovarian cancer serum biomarkers. The platform was shown to be useful for evaluation of individual antibodies for comparative analysis, such as with disease classification, and biomarker validation and discovery. We demonstrate its performance by showing that known tumor markers behave as expected. We also identify several promising biomarkers from a candidate list and generate hypotheses to support new discovery studies.