Identification of nasopharyngeal carcinoma metastasis-related biomarkers by iTRAQ combined with 2D-LC-MS/MS

To identify metastasis-related proteins in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), iTRAQ-tagging combined with 2D LC-MS/MS analysis was performed to identify the differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) in high metastatic NPC 5-8F cells and non-metastatic NPC 6-10B cells, and qRT-PCR and Western blotting were used to confirm DEPs. As a result, 101 DEPs were identified by proteomics, and 12 DEPs were selectively validated. We further detected expression of three DEPs (RAN, SQSTM1 and TRIM29) in a cohort of NPC tissue specimens to assess their value as NPC metastatic biomarkers, and found that combination of RAN, SQSTM1 and TRIM29 could discriminate metastatic NPC from non-metastatic NPC with a sensitivity of 88% and a specificity of 91%. TRIM29 and RAN expression level were closely correlated with lymph node and distant metastasis and clinical stage (P