Revealing Uncharted Biology with Single Cell Multiplex Proteomic Technologies: Applications
Healthy tissues and organs rely on the precise coordination of diverse cell types, each responding to external and internal signals. Disease disrupts this coordination. Since proteins drive cellular function, analyzing their abundance and activation states in single cells helps identify key cell populations in health and disease. Bulk protein analyses mask critical differences between individual cells. Additionally, the arrangement of cells into neighborhoods through cell-cell interactions is essential for tissue function. Over the last decade, single-cell proteomic phenotyping combined with positional information has become crucial for understanding biology in health and disease. This has led to the development of multiple technology platforms, profoundly impacting fields including developmental biology, cancer biology, immunology, neuroscience, and drug discovery.