Novel serum biomarkers to differentiate cholangiocarcinoma from benign biliary tract diseases using a proteomic approach

Abstract

Background and Aim: Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) is the most frequent biliary malignancy, which poses high mortality rate due to lack of early detection.Hence, most CCAcases are present at the advanced to late stages with local or distant metastasis at the time of diagnosis. Currently available tumor markers including CA19-9 and CEA are inefficient and of limited usage due to low sensitivity and specificity.Here, we attempt to identify serum tumormarkers for CCA that can effectively distinguish CCA frombenign biliary tract diseases (BBTDs). Methods. Serum samples from 19 CCA patients and 17 BBTDs were separated by SDS-PAGE followed with LC-MS/MS and were subjected to statistical analysis and cross-validation to identify proteins whose abundance was significantly elevated or suppressed in CCAsamples compared to BBTDs. Results. In addition to identifying several proteins previously known to be differentially expressed in CCA and BBTDs, we also discovered a number of molecules that were previously not associated with CCA. These included FAM19A5, MAGED4B, KIAA0321, RBAK, and UPF3B. Conclusions. Novel serum biomarkers to distinguish CCA from BBTDs were identified using a proteomic approach. Further validation of these proteins has the potential to provide a biomarker for differentiating CCA from BBTDs. © 2015 Tavan Janvilisri et al.