Proteomics Analysis of Human Breast Milk by Two-Dimensional Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis (2D-PAGE) Coupled with Mass Spectrometry to Assess Breast Cancer Risk.

Breast Cancer (BC) is one of the most common cancers and one of the most common causes for cancer- related mortality. Discovery of protein biomarkers associated with cancer, is considered as important for early diagnosis and prediction of the cancer risk. Protein biomarkers could be investigated by large-scale protein investigation or proteomics, using mass spectrometry (MS)- based techniques. Our group applies MS-based proteomics to study the protein pattern in human breast milk from women with BC and controls and investigates the alterations and dysregulations of breast milk proteins in comparison pairs of BC versus control. These dysregulated proteins might be considered as potential future biomarkers of BC. Identification of potential biomarkers in breast milk may benefit young women without BC, but who could collect the milk for future assessment of BC risk. Previously we identified several dysregulated proteins in different sets of human breast milk samples from BC patients and controls using gel-based protein separation coupled with MS. Here, we performed two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2D-PAGE) coupled with nano-liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (nanoLC-MS/MS) in a small-scale study on a set of 6 human breast milk samples (3 BC samples vs. 3 controls) and we identified several dysregulated proteins which have potential roles in cancer progression and might be considered as potential BC biomarkers in the future. Proteomics data is available via ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD040188. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.