Blood plasma reference material: a global resource for proteomic research.

Abstract

There is an ever-increasing awareness and interest within the clinical research field, creating a large demand for blood fraction samples as well as other clinical samples. The translational research area is another field that is demanding for blood samples, used widely in proteomics, genomics, as well as metabolomics. Blood samples are globally the most common biological samples that are used in a broad variety of applications in life science. We hereby introduce a new reference blood plasma standard (heparin) that is aimed as a global resource for the proteomics community. We have developed these reference plasma standards by defining the Control group as those with C-reactive protein levels <3 mg/L and a Disease group with C-reactive protein ranges >30 mg/L. In these references we have used both newborn children 1-2 weeks, as well as youngsters 15-30 years, and middle aged 30-50 years, and elderly patients at the ages of 65+. In total, there were 80 patients in each group in the reference plasma pools. We provide data on the developments and characteristics of the reference blood plasma standards, as well as what is used by the team members at the respective laboratories. The standards have been evaluated by pilot sample processing in biobanking operations and are currently a resource that allows the Proteomic society to perform quantitative proteomic studies. By the use of high quality reference plasma samples, global initiatives, such as the Chromosome Human Proteome Project (C-HPP), will benefit as one scientific program when the entire human proteome is mapped and linked to human diseases. The plasma reference standards are a global resource and can be accessed upon request.