Study on serum proteomic features in patients with and without recurrence or metastasis after surgical resection of esophageal carcinoma.

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to identify specific bio-markers for recurrence or metastasis of esophageal carcinoma in serum of patients subjected to esophagectomy. Surface-enhanced laser desorp-tion/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (SELDI-TOF-MS) combined with IMAC-Cu(2+) ProteinChip array were performed for the serum protein profiling in patients after surgical resection of esophageal carcinoma. Two groups of patients were analyzed 38 patients without recurrence or metastasis (Group 1) and 22 patients with recurrence or metastasis after resection (Group 2). The Biomarker Wizard and Bio-marker Patterns software were used to identify proteins differentially expressed between the 2 groups. There were 33 differentially expressed serum proteins detected by comparison between the groups. The clas-sification tree model composed of 3 differentially expressed proteins with different m/z (9368.63, 5342.59, and 5254.43 Da) was established. Under the learning mode, the sensitivity and specificity of this model for diagnosis of esophageal carcinoma recurrence or metastasis were both 100% (22/22 and 38/38, respectively). Under the testing mode, the sensitivity and specificity were 90.9% (20/22) and 94.7% (36/38), re-spectively. The recurrence or metastasis of esophageal carcinoma after esophagectomy can be rapidly and accurately detected using the combi-nation of SELDI-TOF-MS with IMAC-Cu(2+) ProteinChip array, which, therefore, has a potential for clinical application.