| Despite continuous effort and progress in cancer detection and therapy, cancer remains one of our greatest health concerns because of its low survival rate and rapid incidence increase. One reason for this is the late detection and therefore pre-cancer diagnosis is crucial. In pre-cancer studies, cancer biomarkers become significant because of the useful information it contains such as possible cancer type and stage. Separation and detection technique plays an important role in cancer biomarker identification.;Coenzyme A (CoA) facilitates more than 100 chemical reactions in cells. Because of its low abundance accumulated in cells, it is critical to develop a sensitive method to detect CoA compounds in biological samples in order to study it as a cofactor.;The valuable characteristics of capillary electrophoresis (CE), such as rapid analysis, high separation efficiency and minimal consumption of sample and buffer solutions, make it a unique analytical technique. The combination of the high specificity and sensitivity of tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) with the high separation ability of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) facilitates the sensitive and specific analysis in complex matrices like urine and blood. In this body of work, new methods were developed using CE-UV, CE-LIF and HPLC-MS/MS to determine modified nucleosides, CoAs, and sarcosine, proline, kynurenine, uracil and glycerol-3-phosphate. These methods were applied to measure the above mentioned analytes in either urine samples or cell extracts and proved to be simple, fast, reliable and powerful. Based on these newly developed methods, cancer biomarker screening is undertaken and new biomarkers will be identified. |
