Upregulated expression of human neutrophil peptides 1, 2 and 3 (HNP 1-3) in colon cancer serum and tumours: a biomarker study

Abstract

Background: Molecular markers for localized colon tumours and for prognosis following therapy are needed. Proteomics research is currently producing numerous biomarker studies with clinical potential. We investigate the protein composition of plasma and of tumour extracts with the aim of identifying biomarkers for colon cancer.

Proteomic analysis reveals successive aberrations in protein expression from healthy mucosa to invasive head and neck cancer

“…It was reasonable to assume that these were the a-defensins 1, 2 and 3 which had already been described in several proteomic studies (Vlahou et al, 2001;Albrethsen et al, 2005;Buhimschi et al, 2005). The assignment of this peak triplet to a-defensins was confirmed by analysis of the tryptic digest of the gel bands taken from the low mass range followed by MALDI-MS (Table 1).…”

“…It is believed that they play an important role in the mucosal innate immune defense against a number of infectious diseases (reviewed in Ganz (2003)), and they are regarded as general markers for inflammation-related diseases, which includes epithelial cancers. Accordingly, overexpression of a-defensins in epithelial cancers is not a novel observation (Vlahou et al, 2001;Muller et al, 2002;Albrethsen et al, 2005). In HNSCC, increased expression of a-defensins 1-3 has been described in neutrophils that infiltrate HNSCCs (Lundy et al, 2004).…”

Identification of macrophage migration inhibitory factor and human neutrophil peptides 1–3 as potential biomarkers for gastric cancer

“…A distinctive triplet of peaks were among the most significantly elevated peaks in the SELDI spectra of tumour tissue using both CM10 (m/z 3374, 3446 and 3490) and IMAC (m/z 3375, 3447 and 3492) ProteinChip arrays. A triplet of peaks with m/z values of 3372, 3443 and 3486, which bind to IMAC ProteinChip arrays, has previously been identified as HNPs 1 -3 (Albrethsen et al, 2005). It seemed highly likely that our differentially expressed peaks also corresponded to HNPs 1 -3 and this was confirmed by purification and LC-MS/MS of the intact polypeptides (Supplementary information, Figure S1 and Table S1).…”

“…Human neutrophil peptides 1 -3 have been shown to be elevated in either tumour tissue or serum from patients with a range of cancer types (Müller et al, 2002;Lundy et al, 2004;Albrethsen et al, 2005;Melle et al, 2005), and we now extend this observation to gastric cancer. Human neutrophil peptides 1 -3 are also elevated by inflammation, for example, inflammatory bowel disease (Cunliffe et al, 2002) and so may lack specificity as tumour Figure 3 Partial least squares regression analysis using all peaks from CM10 and IMAC SELDI serum profiles of 50 gastric cancer patients (filled symbols) and 29 non-cancer controls (hollow symbols).…”

“…SELDI combines on-chip retentate chromatography with mass spectrometry to generate 'proteomic profiles' and can be applied to fluids, such as serum, plasma and urine and tissue extracts (e.g., Rogers et al, 2003;Albrethsen et al, 2005;Ward et al, 2006Ward et al, , 2008Brozkova et al, 2008). SELDI provides a wealth of information on the low molecular proteome (o20 kDa), which contains diagnostic information (Villanueva et al, 2006).…”