[The role of proteomics in prognosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases].

Despite advances in medicine and biological sciences the cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are still a major cause of morbidity and mortality in societies around the world. It is therefore necessary to improve the treatment methods used so far, to look for new therapeutic targets and specific, clinically useful biomarkers. Classic research related to the circulatory system are primarily concerned with histopathological descriptions of pathophysiological processes, and mapping the structure and expression of genes involved in the development of cardiovascular diseases. This information, however, does not fully explain the molecular basis of the CVD occurrence. That gap between traditional research in the pathophysiology field and the latest knowledge at the DNA level is effectively filled in by proteomics, the science dealing with the structure and function of the human proteome. This article presents main directions of the proteomics development in explaining pathomechanisms of formation and diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases and atherosclerosis accounting for the latest integrated research methods including techniques for protein and peptide fractionation, mass spectrometry and protein arrays.