Strategies in functional proteomics: Unveiling the pathways to precision oncology

- Personalised oncology must aim to deliver successful therapy and eliminate the statistical component that represents failure.
- Today, chemotherapeutic strategies compromise between a target function and the availability of inhibitors.
- Proteomics methodologies can identify the mechanisms of action of pharmacological compounds.
- Biological complexity can be experimentally observed using quantitative proteomics and phosphoproteomics.
- Combination of pan-omic data with patient-matched data will be important in the design of personalised theranostic profiles.

Personalised strategies in cancer care are required to overcome the therapeutic challenges posed by variability between patients and disease subsets. To this end, enhanced precision tools must be developed to describe the molecular drivers of malignant proliferation. Such tools must also identify druggable targets and biomarkers in order to provide essential information regarding drug development and therapeutic outcome. Here we discuss how proteomics-based approaches provide a set of viable methodologies capable of delivering quantitative information throughout the main stages of personalised oncology and a ratiometric platform that delivers systems-wide methods for drug evaluation.