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ABSTRACT
Introduction: The prognosis for patients with upper gastrointestinal cancers remains dismal despite the development of multimodality therapies that incorporate surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. Early diagnosis and personalized treatment should lead to better prognosis. Given the advances in proteomic technologies over the past decades, proteomics promises to be the most effective technique to identify novel diagnostics and therapeutic targets.
Areas covered: For this review, keywords were searched in combination with ‘proteomics’ and ‘gastric cancer’ or ‘esophageal cancer’ in PubMed. Studies that evaluated proteomics associated with upper gastrointestinal cancer were identified through reading, with several studies quoted at second hand. We summarize the proteomics involved in upper gastrointestinal cancer and discuss potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets.
Expert commentary: In particular, the development of mass spectrometry has enabled detection of multiple proteins and peptides in more biological samples over a shorter time period and at lower cost than was previously possible. In addition, more sophisticated protein databases have allowed a wider variety of proteins in samples to be quantified. Novel biomarkers that have been identified by new proteomic technologies should be applied in a clinical setting.
Declaration of interest
K. Harada is supported by a grant from the Program for Advancing Strategic International Networks to Accelerate the Circulation of Talented Researchers from the Japan Society for the Provision of Science. 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.