Proteomics and genomics The emergent properties of biomarkers in mechanism and medicine Editorial Overview Garry P Nolan Current Opinion in Chemical Biology 2006, 10:1–3 Available online 19th January 2006 1367-5931/$ – see front matter # 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. DOI 10.1016/j.cbpa.2006.01.015 Garry P Nolan Stanford NHLBI Proteomics Center, Baxter Laboratory of Genetic Pharmacology, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, School of Medicine, Stanford University, 269 Campus Drive, CCSR 3205, Stanford, CA 94305, USA e-mail: gnolan@stanford.edu Dr Nolan is the Director of the Stanford University NHLBI Proteomics Center and has been at Stanford since 1983, first as a graduate student with Len Herzenberg and then as a Faculty member since 1993. He did his postdoctoral work with David Baltimore at MIT, where he cloned NF-kappaB p65 and developed retroviral transfer systems. His background is in genetics and immunology and he has a strong interest in technique development and biomedical translation in aid of mechanistic inquiry in the clinic. To whatever degree we might imagine our knowledge of the properties of the several ingredients of a living body to be extended and perfected, it is certain that no mere summing up of the separate actions of those elements will ever amount to the action of the living body itself . John Stuart Mill (A System of Logic, Bk.III, Ch.6, §1) For this issue we focus upon topical applications of proteomics that stand ready to remake the biomedical and clinical landscapes as we currently know them. As students, professors, academic laboratories, funding agencies and the pharmaceutical industry have accelerated their development and appli- cation of high-throughput measuring systems in their studies, the commu- nity as a whole is coming to the realization that something extraordinary is happening. Where once cancer and other maladies seemed a daunting (and untamable) nightmare, it appears that more precise visions of the circuitry within cells is providing renewed morale to the biomedical community. Until recently, the prospect of linking up complex networks of interacting players in a signaling network boggled the brain. Now, computational approaches have been brought to bear upon vast data stores from mRNA chip analyses, literature searches, protein interactomes and newer high- throughput data-generation platforms, and appear ready to rescue us from drowning in data overload. Where drug action was a ‘discovery process’ best understood in the laboratory setting, only the most optimistic dared to hope that we might understand drug action in human clinical settings. Now, researchers come with a revivalist’s enthusiasm to the bedside, to develop biomarkers that will prognosticate how a drug will affect a patient before it is even administered, and more. From where do we justify this renewed enthusiasm? Is it all just another trendy way to say the ‘light is near’, ‘the truth is around the corner’, and ‘the check is in the mail’? The reviews in this issue belay the concern, and show how new proteomic platforms are being translated from data, to information, to knowledge, and to clinical wisdom. We are moving to a place where bio- assays enable a better generation of relevant understanding of cellular mechanisms at a global level. We are moving to a place where understanding of cellular mechanisms can be done nearly at the bedside of the patient. The first element in data generation is the ‘unmet need’. As a researcher, I want to know something new about a problem in which I am interested, but to accomplish this effectively I might need a new tool. I could get my answer by hitting the problem with the same hammer everyone else has used and www.sciencedirect.com Current Opinion in Chemical Biology 2006, 10:1–3