What if we could prevent more than 60 diseases? These are the keys to achieving it

A new study, published in Nature Medicine, suggests that proteins present in the blood can predict the onset of more than 60 different diseases. This research was carried out in collaboration with international institutions such as GSK, Queen Mary University of London, University College London, the University of Cambridge and the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité Universitätsmedizin (Germany).

The scientists analysed data from the UK Biobank Pharma Proteomics Project (UKB-PPP), which is to date the largest proteomics study carried out. In this study, approximately 3,000 plasma proteins were measured in a random sample of more than 40,000 individuals from the UK Biobank.

The protein information was linked to the electronic medical records of the participants. Using advanced analytical techniques, the researchers identified for each disease a signature composed of between 5 and 20 key proteins for prediction.

The results of the study show that these protein ‘signatures’ can anticipate the onset of 67 diseases, including multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, motor neurone disease, pulmonary fibrosis and dilated cardiomyopathy.

Protein-based predictive models demonstrated superior performance compared to models using conventional clinical data. In fact, prediction based on blood cell counts, cholesterol levels, kidney function, and diabetes tests (such as glycated hemoglobin) was less accurate than protein-based models in most cases.

This advance opens the door to new opportunities to predict a wide variety of diseases, even the rarest ones, offering earlier diagnoses that could benefit patients. Many disorders, which often take months or years to diagnose, could be identified more quickly and effectively with this methodology.

However, these findings need to be validated in diverse populations, including both people with and without symptoms, as well as different ethnic groups.

Claudia Langenberg, lead author and director of the Precision Healthcare University Research Institute (PHURI) at Queen Mary University of London, expressed excitement at the prospect of identifying new diagnostic markers from thousands of circulating proteins in human blood. She stressed the importance of conducting further proteomic studies in diverse populations and developing affordable and accurate clinical tests to measure these proteins.

Julia Carrasco Zanini Sánchez, who was a research student at GSK and the University of Cambridge and is now a postdoctoral researcher at PHURI, noted that several of the identified protein signatures showed equal or superior performance to proteins previously tested as disease markers, such as prostate-specific antigen for prostate cancer.

Robert Scott, co-lead author and Vice President and Head of Human Genetics and Genomics at GSK, stressed that a crucial challenge in drug development is identifying patients who will benefit most from new treatments. This work shows the potential of large-scale proteomic technologies to identify individuals at high risk for a wide range of diseases, aligning with its goal of deepening our understanding of human biology and disease.