How may targeted proteomics complement genomic data in breast cancer?

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Breast cancer (BC) is the most common female cancer in the world and was recently deconstructed in different molecular entities. Although most of the recent assays to characterize tumors at the molecular level are genomic-based, proteins are the actual executors of cellular functions and represent the vast majority of targets for anticancer drugs. Accumulated data has demonstrated an important level of quantitative and qualitative discrepancies between genomic/transcriptomic alterations and their protein counterparts, mostly related to the large number of post-translational modifications.

Areas covered: This review will present novel proteomics technologies such as Reverse Phase Protein Array (RPPA) or mass-spectrometry (MS) based approaches that have emerged and that could progressively replace old-fashioned methods (e.g. immunohistochemistry, ELISA, etc.) to validate proteins as diagnostic, prognostic or predictive biomarkers, and eventually monitor them in the routine practice.

Expert commentary: These different targeted proteomic approaches, able to complement genomic data in BC and characterize tumors more precisely, will permit to go through a more personalized treatment for each patient and tumor.

KEYWORDS:

• Proteomics
• mass spectrometry
• targeted
• selected reaction monitoring
• breast cancer

Declaration of interest

M. Guerin has received financial support for their research activity from Roche. A. Gonçalves has received grants, personal fees and non-financial support from Roche, Novartis and Eisai, personal fees and non-financial support from Glaxosmithkline and non-financial support from Amgen, Pfizer and MSD. J-P. Borg is a scholar of the Institut Universitaire de France. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

Additional information

Funding

The Marseille Mass Spectrometry platform (MaP-IBiSA) is supported by the Institut Paoli-Calmettes, Canceropôle PACA, GEFLUC Marseille and SIRIC Marseille. J-P. Borg’s lab is supported by La Ligue Nationale Contre le Cancer (Label Ligue JPB) and SIRIC (INCa-DGOS-Inserm 6038).