Clinical molecular scanner: the MELANIE project

The MELANIE expert system recognized and blindly separated normal and cirrhotic liver or different cancer biopsy protein patterns. The discovery of a new lipoprotein associated protein highlighted the need for linkages between protein map databases and the human genome databases. The results described in this manuscript clearly demonstrate that some diseases associated with toxic compounds or modifications of the human genome are adequately diagnosed by expert systems which automatically analyze protein maps. The potential of this combination of biotechnology (protein mapping) and computer analysis is the development of a `molecular scanner´ in medicine. The massive amount of information analyzed and stored requires new strategies including centralized protein map databases and image transmission over networks. The increasing knowledge in protein expression and regulation will amplify the impact of the human genome project in medicine and biology