Proteome analysis of adrenal cortical tumors

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Adrenal tumor is a relatively common tumor. The discrimination between adrenal cortical adenoma (ACA) and adrenal cortical carcinoma (ACC) is crucial as these two diseases have distinct prognosis. ACA is a benign tumor curable by surgical excision, while the prognosis of ACC is extremely poor, with a 5-year mortality of 75–90%. Therefore, previous proteomic studies focused on markers allowing the differentiation between ACA and ACC.

Areas covered: Several proteomic approaches based on the analysis of various samples such as human tissues, urine, and cell lines. In this review, we focused on proteomic studies performed to improve adrenal tumor diagnosis and identify ACC therapeutic targets.

Expert commentary: The rapid development of cancer genomics provided a lot of information, which affects functional proteomics. In practice, differentially expressed proteins between ACA and ACC have been suggested in several proteomic studies and had a biologic implication in ACC.

KEYWORDS:

• Adrenal cortical tumor
• adrenal cortical adenoma
• adrenal cortical carcinoma
• diagnosis
• mass spectrometry
• proteomics

Declaration of interest

The authors have no 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. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by a grant from the National R&D Program for Cancer Control, Ministry of Health & Welfare, Republic of Korea (1420080). This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (2015R1A1A1A05001209).