Stromal proteome expression profile and muscle-invasive bladder cancer research

To globally characterize the cancer stroma expression profile of muscle-invasive transitional cell carcinoma and to discuss the cancer biology as well as biomarker discovery from stroma. Laser capture micro dissection was used to harvest purified muscle-invasive bladder cancer stromal cells and normal urothelial stromal cells from 4 paired samples. Two-dimensional liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry was used to identify the proteome expression profile. The differential proteins were further analyzed using bioinformatics tools and compared with the published literature.

We identified 868/872 commonly expressed proteins and 978 differential proteins from 4 paired cancer and normal stromal samples using laser capture micro dissection coupled with two-dimensional liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. 487/491 proteins uniquely expressed in cancer/normal stroma. Differential proteins were compared with the entire list of the international protein index (IPI), and there were 42/42 gene ontology (GO) terms exhibited as enriched and 8/5 exhibited as depleted in cellular Component, respectively. Significantly altered pathways between cancer/normal stroma mainly include metabolic pathways, ribosome, focal adhesion, etc. Finally, descriptive statistics show that the stromal proteins with extremes of PI and MW have the same probability to be a biomarker.

Based on our results, stromal cells are essential component of the cancer, biomarker discovery and network based multi target therapy should consider neoplastic cells itself and corresponding stroma as whole one.