Study of distinct protein profiles for early diagnosis of NSCLC using LCM and SELDI-TOF-MS

No biomarker has been available to detect early lung cancer so far. The aim of this study is to screen biomarker patterns for early diagnosis of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) using laser capture microdissection (LCM) and surface-enhanced laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (SELDI-TOF-MS). The 3 groups of the interested cells from 13 NSCLC tissues, 11 normal lung tissues (out of the 13 NSCLC patients), and 6 benign lung diseased tissues (BLD) were successfully separated by LCM, respectively, and the homogeneities of each type of the cell populations in the three groups were estimated to be over 95%. One-hundred- and twenty-three M/Z peaks were found in the NSCLCs and normal lungs, and between the two groups the relative intensity of 98 M/Z peaks was significantly different ( P