SELDI‐TOF MS Combined With Magnetic Beads for Detecting Serum Protein Biomarkers for Diagnosis of Active Tuberculosis

Abstract

New technologies for the early detection of tuberculosis (TB) are urgently needed. The aim of the present study was to screen for the potential protein biomarkers in serum for the diagnosis of TB using proteomic fingerprint technology. The surface‐enhanced laser desorption ionization time of flight mass spectrometry (SELDI‐TOF‐ MS) combined with WCX magnetic beads was used to profile the serum proteins from 180 patients with TB, 91 cases of healthy volunteers, 40 cases of lung cancer patients, 40 cases of pneumonia patients, and 40 cases of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The protein fingerprint expression of all the serum samples and the resulting profiles between TB and control groups were analyzed with the Biomarker Wizard system. A total of 35 discriminating m/z peaks were detected that were related to TB (p < 0.01). The model of biomarkers based on the four biomarkers (2554.6, 4824.4, 5325.7, and 8606.8 Da) generated excellent separation between the TB and control groups. The sensitivity was 83.3% and the specificity was 84.2%. Blind test data indicated a sensitivity of 75.0% and a specificity of 83.5%. The data suggested a potential application of SELDI‐TOF MS as an effective technology to profile serum proteome, and with pattern analysis, a diagnostic model comprising three potential biomarkers was indicated to differentiate people with TB and healthy controls rapidly and precisely.This work was supported by grants from National Special Sci‐Tech Projects (No. 2012ZX10005001–006), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81072724, No. 81273882), and Zhejiang Province Special Sci‐Tech Projects (No. 2009C03011–3).