PO-512 Protein markers of progression risk in patients with squamous cell vulvar carcinoma

Abstract

IntroductionThe application of the concept of tumour-specific markers to assess a possible disease outcome and to choose appropriate treatment options, is still obstructed by the limited knowledge on vulvar carcinoma (VC) biology. We aimed to identify protein markers of VC that would be indicative of a tumour that is more likely to progress.Material and methodsPrimary tumour samples from 28 patients with early stage squamous cell VC and 14 samples of normal vulvar tissue were studied using iTRAQ analysis. The results obtained for tumour samples of VC patients that progressed during 8–12 years of follow-up period (‘progVC’, n=14) were be compared to those obtained for samples of patients who were disease-free at the time of last observation (‘d-fVC’, n=14). The differentially expressed proteins were subsequently validated using targeted proteomics methods (PRM) and immunohistochemistry using a larger sample set.Results and discussions5510 proteins were identified in the analysed samples. Gene Ontology (GO) analysis of the proteins differentially expressed in progVC and d-fVC tumours proteins indicated an immune response as the most over-represented GO category in this sample comparison. The top 47 candidate markers were chosen for further validation. Correlation of the validation results with clinical parameters of the enrolled VC patients indicated that HMGA2, ANO1, PRTN3, UBE2C, ABI3BP and PRELP should be considered as potential protein markers for the prediction of progression in VC patients.ConclusionOur findings provide evidence showing that deregulation of eight proteins’ abundance is significantly associated with aggressive phenotype of VC. Their immunohistochemical assessment hold promise as a patient stratification tool.AcknowledgementThis work was supported by the Polish National Science Centre grant No. 2013/10/E/NZ5/00663.