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.