Proteomic Applications of Polymeric Nanoparticles with Engineered Affinity towards Select Target

Complexity in biological samples pose a greater challenge for proteomic analysis. In order to overcome this issue, separation or fractionation is often a prerequisite to qualitative or quantitative proteomic approaches. Affinity chromatography is a method for separating biochemical mixture based on a highly specific interaction similar to the one between receptor and ligand. This mini-review discuss the use of polymeric nanoparticles as an alternative matrix support in affinity purification. The nanoparticle-based purification have the potential to selectively target the protein of interest from a complex pool. This strategy could be applied as sample purification step prior to mass spectrometry-based proteomic analyses.