Background & objective: Although lung cancer is largely attributable to tobacco smoking, more than half of the female patients with adenocarcinoma are non-smokers in Hong Kong. This study dedicated to discover biomarkers for lung adenocarcinoma in non-smoking female patients with high-throughput proteinchip technology.
Methods: Protein profiles were generated from 29 specimens of primary lung cancers with matched adjacent non-cancer tissues using surface-enhanced laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (SELDI-TOF-MS).
Results: Comparing the lung cancer and matched normal lung tissues from the non-smoking female patients, 52 proteins with differential expression were discovered, with a percentage of difference ranging from 60% to 213% for the top ten biomarkers. Comparing the lung cancer tissues from the patients without smoking history and those with smoking history, 84 proteins with differential expression were found. The area under receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) for the top ten biomarkers ranged from 0.82 to 0.89. Comparing lung cancer tissues from female and male patients, 69 proteins with differential expression were found. The AUC for the top ten biomarkers was ranged from 0.81 to 0.86.
Conclusion: Using SELDI-TOF-MS, the biomarker candidates that are highly associated with non-smoking female patients with lung adenocarcinoma were filtered.