Mining the Immune Cell Proteome to Identify Ovarian Cancer-Specific Biomarkers.

摘要

In previous studies we have demonstrated that the ovarian cancer antigen CA125 specifically binds to certain sunsets of immune cell. Based on these observations we have hypothesized that proteomic and transciptomic analysis of immune cells from ovarian cancer patients will result in the identification of specific biomarkers in the immune cells. The current proposal will further investigate this hypothesis by conducting in-depth proteomic analysis of immune cells from cancer patients and healthy blood donors. Studies conducted have resulted in development of streamlined protocols for proteomic analysis of human immune cells. Proteomic analysis of human NK cells has been completed. In addition to proteomic analysis we have also compared the transcriptome of immune cells from ovarian cancer patients and healthy donors and have identified approximately 1600 genes that are differentially expressed in the patient samples. On-going research is focused on validating the proteomic and transcriptome data and demonstrating changes immune cells in response to cancer antigens.