Compared to other commercially available proteomic platforms, SOMAscan offers distinct competitive and productivity benefits, several of which are outlined in the table below.
* 300 available now in SOMAscan Standard.
Efforts to identify and measure proteins to date have relied almost entirely on mass spectrometry and/or antibodies to specific proteins.
Although labor intensive, mass spectrometry can detect a broad range of proteins, but only to a sensitivity or “depth” of concentration of ~ 1ng/ml at best, thereby missing many low abundance proteins that are undoubtedly critical biomarkers.
Antibodies (the basis for ELISA tests) can measure individual proteins at many different concentrations, but are simply incapable of measuring a broad range of proteins in an efficient, cost-effective and high-throughput manner (e.g., they cannot be multiplexed in sufficient numbers to measure many proteins in a single assay).