Application of surface-enhanced laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry in screening breast cancer markers / 肿瘤研究与临床

ABSTRACT

Objective To explore the application of serum SELDI proteomic patterns to screen breast cancer biomarkers.Methods Serum protein profiles of 110 breast cancer patients and 100 healthy controls were analyzed with surface-enhanced laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (SELDI-TOFMS).The spectra were generated on weak cation exchange (WCX2) chips and protein peaks clustering and classification analyses were made using Biomaker Wizard software.Differences in protein intensity between breast cancer cases and controls were measured with the Mann-Whitney U test and adjusted for confounding in a multivariate logistic regression model.Results Forty-nine of these proteins were found to have statistically differential expression levels between breast cancer and normal control sera (P ＜ 0.05).Based on literatures reported,six protein biomarkers,with mass-to-charge ratio (M/Z) (4376,8126,8924,3264,3968,and 9180) were selected.Proteins with M/Z 4376,4126,and 8924 were statistically significantly decreased in breast cancer cases compared to those in healthy controls (P ＜ 0.05).Proteins with M/Z 3264,3968,and 9180 were significantly increased in breast cancer cases compared to those in healthy controls,Protein with M/Z 9180 was associated with TNM stage and Her-2 expression in breast cancer (P ＜ 0.05).Protein with M/Z 8926 was related with lymph node metastasis (P ＜0.05).Conclusion These results suggest that serum SELDI protein profiling can distinguish breast cancer patients from normal subjects with relatively high sensitivity and specificity.SELDI-TOF-MS plays a valuable role in the diagnosis of breast cancer and the discovery of new tumor-specific protein biomarkers.