Differential Urinary Proteomic Analysis of Endometrial Cancer

Abstract

Endometrial cancer is one of the most frequent gynecological malignancies present in more than 95 % of all uterine cancers. In spite of that, screening of such disease is not commonly performed in clinical practice due to enormous costs and relatively low sensitivity. Therefore, developing an effective screening test to diagnose endometrial cancer at early stages is of great importance for the clinical area of investigation. In this work, we applied urinary proteomics (i.e., bottom-up proteomic approach followed by nano HPLC-ESI-MS/MS) in patients with endometrial cancer, with respect to find proteins aimed for the early diagnostics and screening. According to the results, the significant semi-quantitative changes were observed in urinary proteome of treated patients. The proteins that may be pivotal in pathogenesis of endometrial cancer, like cadherin-1 (CDH1), vitronectin (VTN) and basement membrane specific-heparan sulphate proteoglycan core protein (HSPG2) were down-regulated, when compared to the control group. Ultimately, it can be stated that urinary proteomics has a potential for the searching of cancer protein biomarkers based on their altered concentration.