Colorectal cancer is a
dominant cancer in the aging population. Early detection is an
important factor in decreasing colon cancer deaths. Therefore more efficient
diagnostic and therapeutic approaches are important for the success of
the
cancer prevention.
It is known that the colon
carcinogenesis
develops as a multistep process from pre - malignant stage via in situ carcinomas to invasive and
metastatic cancer. The carcinogenic progression reflects an
accumulation of
genetic alteration in incipient cells, including activation of
oncogenes and
inactivation of tumor suppressor genes
Gene expression profiling
technique as DNA microarray offer the opportunity to define markers for
cancer.
They have been proven to be very powerful tools for multiplexed
comparative
analysis of gene expression and lead to important insight into gene
expression
patterns associated with disease states.
Nevertheless in colon cancer
the proteins, not mRNA, are
the real
target during the carcinogenic progression. On other hand it is known
that as the
true functional components of the cells they mediate the gene
regulation as
well as enzymatic catalysis, cellular metabolism, DNA replication, cell
division and etc.. Therefore the alteration in their expression profile
may reflect
the cellular changes more accurately. Due to that, the goal of our
research is to
monitor the
profile of selected proteins in colon cancer cell lines with different
degrees
of progression in
comparison with primary colon cells, as well as to determine the
mRNA level.
As a first step we selected a new protein target’s combination so far not used in the cancer diagnosis and analysed them by using Western Blot. Fig. 1 shows that in some cases mRNA and protein level reveal the same tendency, in other there are drastic differences. Obviously, the expression of some proteins is regulated post –transcriptionally.
In order to
facilitate
routine analysis, an antibody chip for diagnosis of early colon cancer
is being
developed in a project together with Schott
- Nexterion,
