Proteomic Technologies Used in Cancer Proteomics

Proteomics is the study of the proteome—defined as the total set of proteins expressed in a given cell type at a given time [27]. Tremendous progress has been made in the past few years in generating large-scale cellular protein profiles, organelle composition, protein activity patterns, and datasets for protein-protein interactions. 

Differential in-gel electrophoresis (DIGE) facilitates protein expression by labeling different populations of proteins with fluorescent dyes. Typically, paired samples from the normal and tumor region are labeled with Cy3 and Cy5. After analysis by differential analysis image software, protein spots that exhibit a significant difference in intensity are excised for in-gel tryptic digestion and MS analysis. 

Isotope-Coded Affinity Tagging and Amino Acid-Coded Mass Tagging 

Over the recent years, proteomic technologies evolved rapidly and now offer new perspectives in discovery of new cancer biomarkers based on the detection of low molecular weight proteins or peptides by MS. Two main peptidomic approaches are currently under investigation. These include pattern recognition and single/oligo biomarker detection. 

Reverse-Phase Protein Arrays-Based Studies 

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