Detection and identification of serum protein peak at 6648 m/z as a novel indicator in breast cancer based on mass spectrometry

• Published in: Discovery medicine Vol. 23; no. 128; p. 283
• Main Authors: Song, Dongjian, Yue, Lifang, Zhan, Yuxiao, Zhang, Junjie, Yan, Zechen, Fan, Yingzhong, Yang, Heying, Zhang, Da, Liu, Qiuliang, Xia, Ziqiang, Qin, Pan, Jia, Jia, Yue, Ming, Yu, Jiekai, Zheng, Shu, Yang, Fuquan, Wang, Jiaxiang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 01.05.2017
• Subjects: Amino Acid Sequence; Biomarkers, Tumor - blood; Blood Proteins - analysis; Blood Proteins - chemistry; Blotting, Western; Breast Neoplasms - blood; Breast Neoplasms - diagnosis; Demography; Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay; Female; Humans; Middle Aged; Peptides - chemistry; Prognosis; Reproducibility of Results; Spectrometry, Mass, Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption-Ionization - methods
• ISSN: 1944-7930

Breast cancer (BC) is the second-leading cause of cancer mortality after lung cancer in women owing partly to a lack of specific and sensitive tests for early screening and monitoring. The detection of novel specific BC serum indicators for screening purposes is an essential clinical need. A total of 437 serum specimens from 310 BC patients that were divided into mining and testing sets were collected in this study. In contrast with the conventional BC indicators through receiver operating characteristic, survival and hazard function curves, and multivariate Cox regression analyses, we intended to hunt for stable protein indicators from serum specimens and identify their diagnostic and prognostic potential for BC. We identified a unique serum peptide located at 6648 Da originated from apoC-III with a validated correlation with BC tumorigenesis with confirmation in a substantive testing set and minimization of systematic bias by pre-analytical parameters. We found that the diagnostic efficacy of this peptide is better than the present conventional BC diagnostic indicators either alone or in combination with conventional indicators in distinguishing BC patients from control volunteers. Moreover, this peptide denotes a stronger prognostic factor for BC patients than conventional indicators. In light of these findings, we speculate that this peptide is a potential diagnostic and prognostic indicator and a supplement to conventional indicators in monitoring BC. The detection of this peptide located at 6648 Da in sera could enhance early screening and assessment of the postoperative survival opportunity for BC patients.