P0180Stage-specific proteomic profiles of primary colorectal adenocarcinomas in Malaysian patients

Abstract

Background We aimed to characterise stage-specific colorectal carcinoma tumour-specific proteomic profiles in Malaysian patients with colorectal carcinoma as a starting point for the development of local screening, diagnostic, or treatment scheme. Methods Stringent criteria were applied for patients’ selection—i.e., newly-diagnosed cases without personal history of cancer or family history of colorectal carcinoma, with no known hereditary colorectal carcinoma syndrome, and not receiving any neoadjuvant chemo- or radiotherapy. Ten stage II, five stage III, and five stage IV colorectal carcinoma patients were recruited for our comparative protein expression analysis via a combination of 2-D DIGE and LC-MS/MS. Findings Twenty protein spots of interest were reported in the stage II colorectal carcinoma group (p 0.05). Interpretation Our failure to identify aberrantly regulated proteins in advanced stage colorectal adenocarcinomas warrants further investigation. One of the possibilities is that, the adjacent histologically normal colonic mucosa might experience certain molecular changes to create a permissive microenvironment for tumour invasion and metastasis. If this is confirmed, the use of adjacent macroscopically normal colonic mucosa as a normal control in pair-wise analyses of colorectal carcinomas needs to be re-evaluated.