
Cancer biomarker discovery in saliva by mass spectrometry
Author(s) -
Kiran Ambatipudi,
James E. Melvin
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
oncology, gastroenterology and hepatology reports
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2348-3113
pISSN - 2278-8921
DOI - 10.5530/ogh.2013.1.2
Subject(s) - biomarker discovery , biomarker , proteomics , cancer , medicine , cancer biomarkers , computational biology , saliva , bioinformatics , biology , biochemistry , gene
The quest for biomarkers has been much pursued to aid in the early diagnosis, monitor post-treatment progress
and development of targeted therapies. Nevertheless, the translation of biomarker discovery to clinical use
has been limited due to multiple reasons such as the long path from discovery to clinical assays, limitation of
samples and incoherent pipeline for biomarker development. To date, diagnosis of cancer has been based on
biopsies and histological examinations and often becomes difficult to get repeated sampling from patients for
confirmation. Consequently, it is important for clinical researchers to look at multiple body fluids and different
molecular techniques to identify biomarkers. One such bodyfluid is saliva, which is easily and non-invasively
collected and contains thousands of potential protein biomarkers. Moreover, recent advances in the sensitivity
and specificity of mass spectrometry based proteomics hold great promise to identify potential biomarkers.
This review presents an overview of the potential use of saliva and mass spectrometry for global discovery and
validation of biomarkers