Label-free quantitation for clinical proteomics

Abstract

Label-free quantification (LFQ) has emerged as a viable option for quantitative LC-MS/MS-based proteomic analyses for use on the scale of hundreds of samples such as are encountered in clinical analysis. Notably, sample preparation, sample loading, HPLC separations, and mass spectrometric performance must be highly reproducible for this approach to be effective. The following protocols describe the key steps in the methods related to sample preparation and analysis for LC-MS/MS-based label-free quantitation using standard data-dependent acquisition.