Recent advances in proteomics and cancer biomarker discovery

Abstract

Early diagnosis and prevention is a key factor in reducing the mortality and morbidity of cancer. However, currently available screening tools lack enough sensitivity for early diagnosis. It is important to develop noninvasive techniques and methods that can screen and identify asymptomatic patients who have cancer. Biomarkers of cancer status can also serve as powerful tools in monitoring the course of cancer and in determining the efficacy and safety of novel therapies. Thus, discovery of novel specific biomarkers are needed that may provide informative clues for early diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Recently, remarkable progress has been made in the development of new proteomics technology. The progress that has been made in this field is helpful in identifying biomarkers that can be used for early diagnosis of cancer and improving the understanding of the molecular etiological mechanism of cancer. This article describes the current state of the art in this field.

Keywords: biomarker; cancer; genomics; proteomics.

Figure 1

A schematic representation of the SILAC (‘stable-isotope labelling in cell culture’) method. A stably labelled amino acid in a cell-culture medium (in this case, ‘heavy’ arginine or lysine) is incorporated fully into the proteome of one cell population (“Cell pop 2”). Relative quantification experiments can easily be carried out using cells that were grown in normal media as the control (Cell pop 1). Cell lysates from two conditions can be combined and purified through many steps. The proteins are then digested and if the two forms of the peptides co-elute, a peptide ratio can be obtained for each mass spectrum, which allows the protein levels in the two populations to be quantified relative to each other.