Open AccessBreast Cancer Proteomics – Differences in Protein Expression between Estrogen Receptor-Positive and -Negative Tumors Identified by Tandem Mass Tag Technology
Author(s) -
Eugen Ruckhäberle,
Thomas Karn,
Lars Hanker,
J Schwarz,
Peter SchulzKnappe,
Karsten Kuhn,
Gitte Böhm,
Stefan Selzer,
Neukum Erhard,
Knut Engels,
Uwe Holtrich,
M. Kaufmann,
Achim Rody
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
breast care
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.767
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1661-3805
pISSN - 1661-3791
DOI - 10.1159/000272241
Subject(s) - breast cancer , estrogen receptor , proteomics , immunohistochemistry , western blot , medicine , cancer research , estrogen , tandem mass tag , cancer , protein expression , oncology , pathology , bioinformatics , quantitative proteomics , biology , gene , genetics
BACKGROUND: Proteomic analysis has become an effective tool in breast cancer research. In this study, we applied the new gel-free tandem mass tag (TMT) reference method for the first time in breast cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Proteomic analysis was used to compare 10 estrogen receptor (ER)-positive and 10 ER-negative samples. The results of the proteomic approach were validated by Western blot, immunohistochemistry and gene expression analysis. RESULTS: 17 proteins with significant differences in expression were identified. 13 proteins were overexpressed in ER-negative tumors and 4 were overexpressed in ER-positive samples. All these proteins were characterized by relatively high cellular abundance. CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrate that the gel-free TMT approach allows the quantification of differences in protein expression levels. Further improvement of the sensitivity by subfractionation of the tissue should allow also the identification of low-abundance proteins and might lead to the use of this method in breast cancer research.