Serum proteome profiling for diagnostics of ovarian cancer using ClinProt magnetic technique and MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry

Using ClinProt magnetic beads with reverse-phase (MB-HIC 8 and HB-HIC 18), weak cation exchange (MB-WCX) and metal affinity (MB-IMAC Cu) surfaces fractions of peptides and proteins were isolated from human sera for their profiling by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. Proteome profiling of sera from basically healthy women (47 subjects, average age 49) and from women with verified ovarian cancer (stages 1-IV, 47 patients, average age 51) by means of MB-WCX beads allowed to generate the best diagnostic models based on Genetic Algorithm and Supervised Neural Network classifiers; these models demonstrated 100% sensitivity and specificity during analysis of the test set. Introduction of additional sera from patients with colorectal cancer (19) and ulcerous colitis (5) to the statistical model confirmed 100% ovarian cancer recognition. Statistical analysis of mass-spectrometry peak areas included to the diagnostic classifiers showed 3 peaks characteristic for ovarian cancer and 4 peak areas exhibiting changes associated with both ovarian and colorectal cancer.