Discovery of tumor markers for gastric cancer by proteomics

Abstract

Gastric cancer (GC) has a high rate of morbidity and mortality among various cancers worldwide. The development of noninvasive diagnostic methods or technologies for tracking the occurrence of GC is urgent, and searching reliable biomarkers is considered. This study intended to directly discover differential biomarkers from GC tissues by two-dimension differential gel electrophoresis (2D-DIGE), and further validate protein expression by western blotting (WB) and immunohistochemistry (IHC). Pairs of GC tissues (gastric cancer tissues and the adjacent normal tissues) obtained from surgery was investigated for 2D-DIEG. Five proteins wereconfirmed by WB and IHC, including glucose-regulated protein 78 (GRP78), glutathione s-transferase pi (GSTpi), apolipoprotein AI (ApoAI), alpha-1 antitrypsin (A1AT) and gastrokine-1 (GKN-1). Among the results, GRP78, GSTpi and A1ATwere significantlyup-regulated and down-regulated respectively in gastric cancer patients. Moreover, GRP78 and ApoAI were correlated with A1AT for protein expressions. This study presumes these proteins could be candidates of reliable biomarkers for gastric cancer. © 2014 Wu et al.