Proteomics of saliva: personal experience.

The salivary proteome is a complex protein mixture resulting from the activity of salivary glands with the contribution of other components that form the oral environment such as oral tissues and micro-organisms. For diagnosis purposes, saliva collection has the great advantage of being an easy and non-invasive technique. Human saliva proteomics have proven to be a novel approach in the search for protein biomarkers for detection of different local and systemic diseases. Currently, more than 1400 salivary proteins have been identified. In the last few years, our research group has extensively studied the salivary proteomics in order to analyse the salivary composition, investigating the major families of proteins present in human and mammalian saliva, the post-translational modifications, the different contributions of glands, the physiological and pathological modifications of saliva. The aim of this report is to present our personal experience in salivary proteomics. In conclusion, salivary proteome analysis represents an important field both for diagnosis and monitoring of various diseases and could be considered a novel approach to prevention of various pathological conditions.