Molecular & Cellular Proteomics
Volume 7, Issue 9, September 2008, Pages 1639-1650
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Research
Comparative Proteomics Approach to Screening of Potential Diagnostic and Therapeutic Targets for Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma

https://doi.org/10.1074/mcp.M700520-MCP200Get rights and content
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This work demonstrates that a comprehensive strategy of proteomics identification combined with further validation and detailed functional analysis should be adopted in the field of cancer biomarker discovery. A comparative proteomics approach was utilized to identify differentially expressed proteins in 10 oral squamous carcinoma samples paired with their corresponding normal tissues. A total of 52 significantly and consistently altered proteins were identified with eight of these being reported for the first time in oral squamous carcinoma. Of the eight newly implicated proteins, RACK1 was chosen for detailed analysis. RACK1 was demonstrated to be up-regulated in cancer at both the mRNA and protein levels. Immunohistochemical examination showed that the enhanced expression of RACK1 was correlated with the severity of the epithelial dysplasia as well as clinical stage, lymph node involvement, and recurrence, which are known indicators of a relatively poor prognosis in oral squamous carcinoma patients. RNA interference specifically targeted to silence RACK1 could initiate apoptosis of oral squamous carcinoma cells. Taken together, the results indicate that RACK1 is up-regulated in oral squamous carcinoma, not only being closely related to cell proliferation and apoptosis but also linked to clinical invasiveness and metastasis in carcinogenesis. The observations suggest that RACK1 may be a potential biomarker for early diagnosis, prognosis, and monitoring in the therapy of oral squamous carcinoma. Further this comprehensive strategy could be used for identifying other differentially expressed proteins that have potential to be candidate biomarkers of oral squamous carcinoma.

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Published, MCP Papers in Press, May 4, 2008, DOI 10.1074/mcp.M700520-MCP200

This work was supported by the National Science Funds for Talented Professionals (Grant 30725041), the National 863 High Tech Foundation (Grant 2007AA021205), the National Basic Research Program of China (Grants 2008CB517307 and 2006CB504303), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 30300387, 30471891, and 30672323). The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked “advertisement” in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

The on-line version of this article (available at http://www.mcponline.org) contains supplemental material.