Proteomic analysis of human cervical adenocarcinoma mucus to identify potential protein biomarkers

BACKGROUND: Cervical cancer is the most common gynecological cancer, encompassing cervical squamous cell carcinoma, adenocarcinoma, and other epithelial tumors. There are many diagnostic methods to detect cervical cancers but no precision screening tool for cervical adenocarcinoma at present. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The cervical mucus from three normal cervices (Ctrl), three endocervical adenocarcinoma (EA), and three cervical adenocarcinoma in situ (AIS) was collected for proteomic analysis. The proteins were screened using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis (LC-MS). The biological function of the differently expressed proteins were predicted by Gene Ontology (GO). RESULTS: A total of 711 proteins were identified, including 237 differently expressed proteins identified in EA/Ctrl comparison, 256 differently expressed proteins identified in AIS/Ctrl comparison, and 242 differently expressed proteins identified in AIS/EA comparison (up-regulate ≥ 1.5 or down-regulate ≤ 0.67). Functional annotation was performed using GO analysis on 1,056 differently expressed proteins to identify those that may impact cervical cancer, such as heme protein myeloperoxidase, which is involved in the immune process, and APOA1, which is associated with lipid metabolism. CONCLUSION: We used proteomic analysis to screen out differently expressed proteins from normal cervical mucus and cervical adenocarcinoma mucus samples. These differently expressed proteins may be potential biomarkers for the diagnosis and treatment of cervical adenocarcinoma but require additional study.