Urinary proteomics and precision medicine for chronic kidney disease: Current status and future perspectives

Precision medicine is since long an ongoing refinement of classical medicine, integrating improved and more detailed pathophysiological understanding with rapid technological advances. In the heterogenous are of chronic kidney disease there seems to be a high potential for improvement in treatment and prognosis for several causes, with new technologies under development, that have yet to be introduced in clinical practice. As in other medical disciplines, investigation of abundant peptide patterns (proteomics) has gained recent interest. Especially relevant for kidney disease, urinary proteomics may provide both improved diagnosis and as reviewed here, also holds promise for personalized treatment in the future. So far, capillary electrophoresis coupled to mass spectrometry (CE-MS) is the most widely applied technique, and in addition to several cross-sectional and cohort studies, there is even an ongoing randomized controlled trial that will soon report on the concept used as a method of personalizing treatment. In addition, there is hope that urinary proteomics can turn into a "liquid biopsy", replacing the invasive diagnostic procedure. The next couple of years will provide more answers on the topic. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.