Discovery of Key Candidate Protein Biomarkers in Early-Stage Nonsmall Cell Lung Carcinoma through Quantitative Proteomics

Difficulties in early-stage diagnosis are among the factors
contributing
to the high mortality of nonsmall cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) patients.
Unfortunately, diagnostic biomarkers are currently lacking, limiting
options in the clinic. To discover proteins that have potential for
biomarker applications, we performed an in-depth quantitative proteomic
analysis on a cohort of Filipino early-stage NSCLC lung adenocarcinoma
(LUAD) patients. Differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) were obtained
by using tandem mass tag (TMT) labeling and mass spectrometry (MS)-based
quantitative proteomics. A total of 6240 quantified proteins were
identified with 3155 significantly upregulated and 1248 significantly
downregulated. Integration of the proteomic result with curated transcriptome
data allowed the identification of 33 proteins with biomarker potential.
This study also provided insights into relevant pathways in NSCLC
LUAD, such as protein translation and metabolic pathways. Interestingly,
all of the enzymes in the hexosamine biosynthetic pathway (HBP) are
found to be upregulated, suggesting its important role in NSCLC LUAD.
It is worthwhile to look at the potential of targeting the metabolic
vulnerability of NSCLC LUAD as a new strategy in drug development.
All MS data were deposited into ProteomeXchange with the identifier
PXD050598.