Open Access Primary research

Stromal proteome expression profile and muscle-invasive bladder cancer research

Haitao Niu1, Haiping Jiang2, Bo Cheng3, Xinhui Li1, Qian Dong4, Leping Shao5, Shiguo Liu6 and Xinsheng Wang1*

Author Affiliations

1 Department of Urology, The Affiliated Hospital of Medical College Qingdao University, Qingdao, China

2 Department of Oncology, The Affiliated Hospital of Medical College Qingdao University, Qingdao, China

3 Department of Urology, The Central Hospital of Shengli Oil Field, Dondying, China

4 Department of Pediatric Surgery, The Affiliated Hospital of Medical College Qingdao University, Qingdao, China

5 Department of Nephrology, The Affiliated Hospital of Medical College Qingdao University, Qingdao, China

6 Gout Laboratory, The Affiliated Hospital of Medical College, Qingdao University, Qingdao, China

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Cancer Cell International 2012, 12:39 doi:10.1186/1475-2867-12-39

Published: 25 August 2012

Abstract

Background

To globally characterize the cancer stroma expression profile of muscle-invasive transitional cell carcinoma and to discuss the cancer biology as well as biomarker discovery from stroma. Laser capture micro dissection was used to harvest purified muscle-invasive bladder cancer stromal cells and normal urothelial stromal cells from 4 paired samples. Two-dimensional liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry was used to identify the proteome expression profile. The differential proteins were further analyzed using bioinformatics tools and compared with the published literature.

Results

We identified 868/872 commonly expressed proteins and 978 differential proteins from 4 paired cancer and normal stromal samples using laser capture micro dissection coupled with two-dimensional liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. 487/491 proteins uniquely expressed in cancer/normal stroma. Differential proteins were compared with the entire list of the international protein index (IPI), and there were 42/42 gene ontology (GO) terms exhibited as enriched and 8/5 exhibited as depleted in cellular Component, respectively. Significantly altered pathways between cancer/normal stroma mainly include metabolic pathways, ribosome, focal adhesion, etc. Finally, descriptive statistics show that the stromal proteins with extremes of PI and MW have the same probability to be a biomarker.

Conclusions

Based on our results, stromal cells are essential component of the cancer, biomarker discovery and network based multi target therapy should consider neoplastic cells itself and corresponding stroma as whole one.

Keywords:
Muscle-invasive bladder transitional cell carcinoma; Stroma; Proteome; Subcellular pattern; Biomarker panel