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Review
. 2022 Feb 15;21(1):53.
doi: 10.1186/s12943-022-01526-8.

Proteomics technologies for cancer liquid biopsies

Zhiyong Ding  1 , Nan Wang  2 , Ning Ji  3   4 , Zhe-Sheng Chen  5
Affiliations
Review

Proteomics technologies for cancer liquid biopsies

Zhiyong Ding et al. Mol Cancer. .

Abstract

Alterations in DNAs could not reveal what happened in proteins. The accumulated alterations of DNAs would change the manifestation of proteins. Therefore, as is the case in cancer liquid biopsies, deep proteome profiling will likely provide invaluable and clinically relevant information in real-time throughout all stages of cancer progression. However, due to the great complexity of proteomes in liquid biopsy samples and the limitations of proteomic technologies compared to high-plex sequencing technologies, proteomic discoveries have yet lagged behind their counterpart, genomic technologies. Therefore, novel protein technologies are in urgent demand to fulfill the goals set out for biomarker discovery in cancer liquid biopsies.Notably, conventional and innovative technologies are being rapidly developed for proteomic analysis in cancer liquid biopsies. These advances have greatly facilitated early detection, diagnosis, prognosis, and monitoring of cancer evolution, adapted or adopted in response to therapeutic interventions. In this paper, we review the high-plex proteomics technologies that are capable of measuring at least hundreds of proteins simultaneously from liquid biopsy samples, ranging from traditional technologies based on mass spectrometry (MS) and antibody/antigen arrays to innovative technologies based on aptamer, proximity extension assay (PEA), and reverse phase protein arrays (RPPA).

Keywords: Antibody arrays; Aptamer; Cancer liquid biopsy; Mass spectrometry (MS); Proteomics; Proximity extension assay (PEA); Reverse phase protein arrays (RPPA).

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Conflict of interest statement

ZD and NW were employees of Fynn Biotechnologies Ltd. The remaining authors declare no conflicts of interests and no competing interests of this work.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Overview of proteomics technologies in cancer liquid biopsies. The inner ring (blue) in the left panel describes the origins of all types of body fluids (Blood, urine, stool, seminal fluid, cervical fluid, ascites, bone marrow, pleural effusion, saliva, CSF, sputum, lymphatic fluid, and sweat). The outer ring is two-colored denoting non-protein (yellow) and sources of protein molecules (red) that are potential biomarkers of interest, the latter of which is further connected with discovery proteomics technologies with demographic principles (right green panel). Those technologies include mass spectrometry, reverse phase protein array, antibody arrays/antigen arrays/beads arrays, proximity extension assay, and aptamer assay and are discussed in this review
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Proteomics-based cancer liquid biopsy for translational medicine. A workflow of clinical biomarker discovery divided into three stages (biomarker screening, candidate selection, and large-scale validation and implementation). Un_targeted and _targeted routes for biomarker exploratory with their analytical scopes are shown. Intensities of the blue color denote their probable significance at individual stages
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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