Seeing through the trick of cancer cells via 2 D gels

The advancement of modern therapy concepts has dramatically extended the postsurvival rates of patients with malignant gastric cancer. However, a remaining setback is the drug resistance of recurrent cancer, which casts a dark shadow over disease prognosis. The original work of K lein et al. [ Proteomics Clin. Appl . 2013, 7 , 813–824] has outlined a rational experimental approach to decipher the mechanistic pathway of cancer drug resistance by proteomic approach. They used gel‐based comparative proteomics to analyze the nuclear proteome of a human gastric cancer cell line (AGS) with and without inactivation of hypoxia‐inducible factor 1 ( HIF ‐1), a transcription factor and master regulator of hypoxia adaptation. Using the classical 2 DE ‐ MS approach, these researchers observed 163 HIF ‐1 responsive proteins, among which over half of them could be confidently identified by MS . From this large dataset, the authors proposed an enhanced nuclear translocation of some proteasomal proteins upon inactivation of HIF ‐1. Overall, this work appropriately used proteomics as a hypothesis‐free, top‐down approach to dissect imperative clinical problems.