Proteomic biomarker discovery for preeclampsia

Preeclampsia is a serious multisystem complication of late pregnancy with adverse effects for mothers and babies. Currently this disorder is diagnosed from clinical observations occurring late in the disease process. Unknown factors in the maternal circulation, possibly released by the preeclamptic placenta, have been linked to the pathophysiological changes characteristic of the disorder. The research described here used proteomic techniques to identify putative preeclampsia biomarkers from two sources: secreted from a placental cell line undergoing differentiation, and directly sampled from the serum and plasma of women with late-onset preeclampsia. The differentially regulated proteins found here provide an important first step towards developing effective biomarkers for diagnosing and/or predicting preeclampsia.