Creative proteomics

09/02/2026

📄 Where is lipidomics going next?

Some of the field's leading researchers — including Maria Fedorova, Xianlin Han, Michal Holčapek, Oliver Fiehn, and Markus Wenk — have published a Perspective in Nature Communications charting the road ahead: "A lipidomics roadmap: from basic research to societal challenges."

Key takeaways for anyone working with lipid data:

🔬 Mass spectrometry, chromatography, and computational tools now map lipid networks at molecule-to-organism resolution — but cross-lab standardization and identification confidence remain unsolved

🩺 Lipidomics is maturing as a biomarker platform for cancer, metabolic disease, and neurodegeneration — though pre-analytical variability still limits reproducibility

🌱 The field is expanding beyond medicine into food science, ecology, and climate-change biology

🧩 Lipid isomer resolution and functional characterization will set the bar for the next generation of studies

If your research touches the lipidome, this is a worthwhile read for calibrating study design and methods expectations.

Read it here: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-73797-4

Lipidomics, a rapidly evolving field at the interface of biology and analytical chemistry, enables comprehensive analysis of lipids in biological systems. This Perspective outlines advances, challenges, and future directions, highlighting applications of lipidomics in basic and translational science...

09/02/2026

🔬 Some viruses need more than a host cell — they need one specific host lipid.

Heartland virus and Dabie bandavirus are tick-borne viruses with growing geographic ranges and no approved vaccines. A key question has been how their glycoproteins trigger membrane fusion during cell entry.

Researchers at Cleveland Clinic (Xia et al., PLOS Pathogens, 2023) looked at the problem from the lipid side — and made a striking discovery:

→ Glucosylceramide, a glycosphingolipid made by the host cell, is essential for bandavirus glycoprotein-induced membrane fusion → Depleting it blocked fusion and infection → Closely related galactosylceramide could not substitute

For this study, the authors used targeted glycosphingolipid quantification provided by Creative Proteomics — measuring GlcCer and GalCer with an SFC-MS/MS method — to quantify these lipids in their infected and treated cell samples.

The result: host lipid metabolism emerges as a potential antiviral target for bandaviruses — and a reminder that sometimes the answer to a virology question sits in the lipidome.

📄 Read the full paper: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1011232

Author summary Heartland bandavirus (HRTV) and Dabie bandavirus (DBV) were recently identified as emerging tick-borne zoonotic viruses in the United States and Asia, respectively. As etiologic agents of hemorrhagic fever with high fatality, HRTV and DBV have been recognized as dangerous viral pathog...

09/02/2026

🔬 Ceramide or dihydroceramide? One double bond apart — and potentially two different biological stories.

Sphingolipids are a family of closely related molecules that regulate membrane structure, apoptosis, inflammation, and immune signaling. Measuring them accurately is a real analytical challenge: isobaric overlap, huge concentration ranges, and fragile low-abundance species.

Our sphingolipids analysis service was built for exactly this:

✔ 150+ sphingolipid species — ceramides, sphingomyelins, S1P, glycosphingolipids, gangliosides, and more ✔ Sensitivity down to 1–5 ng/mL ✔ Linear range across four orders of magnitude ✔ RSD

09/02/2026

Untargeted lipidomics finds the candidates. Targeted lipidomics proves them.

It's a familiar story in lipid research: your untargeted screen flags dozens of interesting species, but turning those hits into publishable, absolute quantities across a full cohort is another challenge entirely.

That's where a targeted approach makes the difference. Our targeted lipidomics service covers:

✔ 8 lipid categories and 50+ subclasses — over 2,400 lipid molecular species
✔ LC-MS/MS in MRM mode plus GC-MS platforms
✔ Absolute quantification with stable isotope-labeled internal standards
✔ Detection limits down to the low-picomole range, CV

08/25/2026

Multiplexed cytokine sensing from 5 microliters of unprocessed serum. Song et al. (March 2026, Nature Communications) introduced "i-eY-Click" — an electrochemical tyrosine-click method that fixes antibodies to electrodes in under 3 minutes.

The result: simultaneous detection of IL-6, IL-1beta, TNF-alpha, and IFN-gamma with pg/mL sensitivity and CV below 3.6%. 20x faster than conventional coupling. Protein activity preserved.

Tested on serum from nanoplastic-exposed mice — revealing cytokine signatures tied to particle surface charge.

This bridges multiplex immunoassays and electrochemical biosensors — throughput of Luminex with the miniaturization of electrochemistry. Point-of-care cytokine panels from finger-prick volumes.

Open access: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70815-3

The development of high-performance electrochemical biosensors is limited by the lack of robust methods for creating well-controlled biointerfaces. Here, the authors present i-eY-Click, a rapid (

08/25/2026

Cholangiocarcinoma tumors resist chemotherapy because the fibroinflammatory stroma blocks drug pe*******on. Burchard et al. (2024, Hepatology Communications) showed that pan-lysyl oxidase inhibition disrupts this barrier — and they proved it with UPLC-MS.

The authors used UPLC-MS quantification of intratumoral 5-fluorouracil (5FU) concentration performed by Creative Proteomics. The mass spectrometry data showed significantly higher 5FU levels in tumors treated with lysyl oxidase inhibitor — direct pharmacokinetic evidence that stroma remodeling overcomes chemoresistance.

Without directly measuring intratumoral drug levels, the mechanism would remain speculative. UPLC-MS provided the quantitative proof.

Our UPLC-MS services support oncology drug development from preclinical PK through clinical analysis.

Read the open-access study: https://doi.org/10.1097/HC9.0000000000000502

08/25/2026

Running 20 separate ELISAs when you could multiplex 30+ analytes from 25 microliters? Our Human Luminex Multiplex Assay Panel uses xMAP color-coded microspheres to quantify cytokines, chemokines, and growth factors simultaneously — in a single well.

10x less sample than ELISA. No inter-assay variability. Pg/mL sensitivity. Custom panels from 300+ human analytes.

Th1/Th2 polarization? Tumor immune microenvironment? Vaccine immunogenicity? We configure the panel to your study endpoints.

Standards, background-subtracted MFI, and absolute concentrations delivered with full curve statistics.

Configure your custom panel: https://cytokine.creative-proteomics.com/human-luminex-multiplex-assay-panel.htm

08/25/2026

Cytokine storms can cause more tissue damage than the original pathogen. Measuring 21 inflammatory mediators in a single 50-microliter sample — that is what our Human Cytokine Storm 21-Plex Luminex Panel delivers.

Using Luminex xMAP technology, we simultaneously quantify IL-6, IL-1beta, TNF-alpha, IFN-gamma, IL-10, IL-8, IL-12p70, IL-17A, and 13 more analytes from one well. Pg/mL sensitivity. 8-point standard curves. Validated for serum, plasma, CSF, and culture supernatant.

Because cytokine biology is network biology — one mediator in isolation misses the cross-talk and feedback loops that define immune pathology.

Applications: CAR-T cytokine release syndrome, anti-inflammatory drug screening, vaccine immunogenicity, sepsis research.

Full analyte list and sample requirements: https://cytokine.creative-proteomics.com/human-cytokine-storm-panel-service.htm

08/19/2026

Spatial proteomics was Nature Methods' 2024 Method of the Year — and the field keeps advancing rapidly.

A 2026 editorial in Nature Methods surveys the latest breakthroughs:

🔬 iPEX — physical tissue expansion + MALDI-MSI for 1–5 µm resolution spatial proteomics, detecting 600–1,500 proteins with 10-100× better sensitivity.

🧬 Deep Visual Proteomics — revealed that ~50% of the liver proteome shows zone-specific expression patterns, a critical insight for toxicology.

🔬 DBiTplus — co-maps full transcriptome and protein markers on the same tissue section, compatible with FFPE samples.

The field is converging toward integrated platforms that combine multiple data modalities on a single tissue section — a powerful direction for spatial biology research.

Read the full survey: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-026-03046-5

08/19/2026

Why do diabetic patients develop more severe heart failure? A new study points to a specific form of cell death — ferroptosis.

Researchers at the University of Nebraska Medical Center analyzed heart tissue from diabetic and non-diabetic heart failure patients using quantitative proteomics. They found that ferroptosis-related proteins (GPX4, ACSL4, transferrin receptor) were significantly altered in diabetic hearts, suggesting this pathway contributes to the increased cardiac damage seen in diabetes.

For this study, the authors used TMT-based LC-MS/MS proteomic analysis provided by Creative Proteomics. The workflow covered protein extraction, digestion, TMT labeling, and nano LC-MS/MS analysis on a Q Exactive HF platform.

These findings highlight how unbiased proteomic profiling can uncover disease mechanisms that are invisible to transcriptomics alone.

Read the full paper: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41420-024-02044-w

Diabetes significantly increases the risk of heart failure by inducing myocardial cell death, potentially through ferroptosis—an iron-dependent, non-apoptotic cell death pathway characterized by lipid peroxidation. The role of cardiac ferroptosis in human heart failure, however, remains poorly und...