To explore the differential proteomic expressions between human lung adenocarcinoma cell line A-549 and normal cell line HBE, a series of methods, including immobilized pH gradient-two dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, silver staining, PDQuest 2-DE software analysis, peptide mass fingerprinting based on matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS) and SWISS-PROT database searching, were used to separate and identify the differential proteomic expressions between A-549 and HBE. The results showed that the good 2-DE pattern including high resolution and reproducibility was obtained. After silver staining, the 2-DE image analysis by PDQuest 2-DE software detected average (890 +/- 38) spots in A-549, and (757 +/- 27) spots in HBE. The average positional deviation of the matched spots between A-549 and HBE 2-DE maps was (2.85 +/- 0.48) mm in IEF direction, and (2.69 +/- 0.37) mm in SDS-PAGE direction. The differential proteomic expression analysis found that there were 535 matched spots between A-549 and HBE 2-DE maps, 355 spots that were not matched in A-549, 222 spots that were not matched in HBE. 18 differential spots (8 spots in A-549 and 10 spots in HBE) were cut off from silver staining gel at random, digested in gel with TPCK-trypsin, measured with MALDI-TOF-MS and searched in the SWISS-PROT database with PeptIdent software. 18 protein were preliminarily identified. These proteins were related to cell signal transduction, cell metabolism, proliferation and differentiation etc. There was a significant difference at protein level between human lung adenocarcinoma cell line A-549 and normal cell line HBE. It suggests that the differential expression analysis of proteomes may be useful to further study of the related proteins and the molecular markers of lung adenocarcinoma.