In an article in the Journal of Proteome Research representatives of HUPO's Human Plasma Proteome Project (HPPP), including several HPA affiliated researchers, present the current progress in the study and mapping of the circulating proteome and discuss how updates of proteomics methods, emerging technologies, and investigations of proteoforms and protein networks can impact the understanding of the proteins circulating in blood.

The circulating proteome consists of all proteins possibly present in blood plasma or serum and presents a key starting point to better understand biological and pathological effects that can potentially lead to the discovery of novel biomarkers used to assess both health and disease. However, the extraordinary complexity and the immense dynamic range of protein abundances, spanning over 12 orders of magnitude, pose a challenge when analyzing this proteome.

Here the potential of both established and novel affinity-based and MS-based methods to complete this task is discussed including a suggestion of a set of proteins suitable for comparing the outcome from these different platforms. Further the 2023-04 build of the Human Plasma Proteome PeptideAtlas (serum and plasma combined) is presented. It now comprises 113 datasets with a total of 0.26 million peptides and 4608 canonical proteins detected, representing 23% of the human proteome.

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