RESUMO
OBJECTIVE: The discovery of new biomarkers for ovarian cancer is clearly necessary for the detection and monitoring of the disease. Experion(TM) automated electrophoresis system can be employed in the identification of differentially expressed proteins in cancer cells. The objective of this study was to discover potential diagnostic serological biomarkers for ovarian cancer. METHODS: We performed protein expression difference analyses for 14 healthy women and 28 ovarian cancer patients with stage I, III and IV using Experion(TM) system. And then we checked the protein expression as silver staining after loading at 8~16% gradient gel for comparison with Experion(TM) gel image. The candidate biomarkers were purified and determined using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometer. RESULTS: The distinctive polypeptide peaks were detected at 115.40, 15.96, 14.8, 11.66, and 10.69 kDa and these five peaks were identified as ceruloplasmin, hemoglobin beta chain, hemoglobin sigma chain, serum amyloid A4, and amyloid related serum protein SAA, respectively. These proteins were significantly different between the sera of normal healthy women and ovarian cancer patients. CONCLUSIONS: Five proteins were found to be significantly different between the sera of normal healthy women and ovarian cancer patients. In addition, Experion(TM) assay system can provide high performance for analysis of ovarian cancer-related proteins by increasing the throughput while maintaining a high level of accuracy.