Screening Of SELDI-TOF-MS For Differentially Expressed Low Abundance Proteins In The Serum Of Patients With HBV-Related Hepatic Diseases

OBJECTIVES: To screen differentially expressed low abundance proteins in the serum of patients with HBV-related hepatic diseases, and discuss their possible value in the progress after HBV infection.METHODS: The surface-enhanced laser desorption or ionization time-of-flight mass spectroscopy (SELDI-TOF-MS) was used to screen the differentially expressed serum proteins that the high abundance proteins were removed with acetonitrile in patients with chronic asymptomatic hepatitis B virus carriers (ASC), chronic hepatitis B (CHB), liver cirrhosis (LC), hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and normal controls, and a diagnosis model was established with each diseased group. After the information of the differentially expressed proteins was found in the protein database- Expasy,their possible structure and function were evaluated.RESULTS: Compared with normal control group,63 differentially expressed protein peaks were detected in ASC group with 29 up-regulated and 34 down-regulated (P < 0.05), while 57 differentially expressed protein peaks were found in CHB group with 29 up-regulated and 34 down-regulated. When the liver cirrhosis patients contained 68 differentially expressed protein peaks with 33 up-regulated and 35 down-regulated,the HCC patients included 74 differentially expressed protein peaks with 28 and 46 down-regulated. Through the comparative analysis, it was found that a differential expression protein peak with a m/z of 15889.8 whose expression was up-regulated gradually increased in an order of the healthy controls, ASC, CHB and LC patients, and the expression in HCC group was lower than CHB group and liver cirrhosis group. At the same time, the expression of protein with m/z of 11742.2 was higher in liver cirrhosis group and HCC group than others, and it was also gradually increased in two orders which one was the healthy controls, CHB and liver cirrhosis patients, the other one was the healthy controls, CHB and HCC patients. With the differential protein peak of 11742.2,the sensitivity and specificity for the diagnosis of liver cirrhosis were 90% and 86.67% while the sensitivity and specificity were 93.33%和83.33% for HCC.CONCLUSIONS: It is show that the high abundance proteins are successfully removed and the differentially expressed low abundance proteins in the serum of patients with HBV-related hepatic diseases are screened out, the ten protein peaks with m/z 8709.7,13759.8,14004.0,15361.89,16072.3,2746.8,3449.1,3941.06,4098.3,9445.5 might be involved in the HBV infection, and the protein peak with m/z 15889.8 might be a biomarker for early diagnosis for HBV-related liver cirrhosis, while the protein peak with m/z 11742.2 might be an important possible biomarker for the development of HBV-related liver cirrhosis or HCC.