MALDI-MS Protein Profiling of Chemoresistance in Extracellular Vesicles of Cancer Cells

Introduction

As part of a collaboration with the Medical University of Vienna, this project aimed to make the detection of chemoresistance biomarkers faster and less invasive for patients undergoing chemotherapy. Faster detection of chemoresistance will improve cancer therapy and therefore improve cancer survival rates. Cancer cells communicate with the whole organism via extracellular vesicles (EVs), which circulate the body and propagate molecular information in support of the malignant phenotype. Colon cancer lymph node metastasis were cultured with progressive levels of fluorouracil to build increasing levels of chemoresistance. EVs were harvested from cell culture supernatant by ultracentrifugation to serve as a model for circulating cancer cell-derived biomarker carriers from body fluids (i.e., liquid biopsy). In this work, differential expression of proteins in EVs, measured by MALDI-TOF-MS, as the result of an increasing chemoresistance of their parent cells was observed.

June 25, 2019 GMT