A successful proteomic experiment involves the optimisation of many steps, from design to data analysis. Supasri and colleagues used PEAKS software to confirm which preparation workflow produced the best results for their proteomic investigation of a challenging specimen.

Translation events that were previously thought to result in non-biologically relevant proteins are now being reconsidered. Increasing evidence shows that some non-canonical proteins may play an important role in immunity and disease. This paper examines the unique features of the non-canonical translatome and how they may influence tumor immunosurveillance.

Isolating and identifying native peptides in serum samples can be very difficult by LC-MS/MS data in plasma studies. Taguchi and colleagues address these challenges and show that this approach to plasma peptidomics can ID unknown low abundance peptides with biological activity.

One of the hurdles in the development of immunopeptidomic tools is the heterogeneity of the tumour-associated signals resulting in challenges with traditional database search strategies for MS data. Here Qi et al. from NIH are working to remove this hurdle by combining de novo peptide antigen sequencing and custom database strategies.