Research article

Serum diagnosis of diffuse large B-cell lymphomas and further identification of response to therapy using SELDI-TOF-MS and tree analysis patterning

Xing Zhang^2,3 , Bo Wang^1,3 , Xiao-shi Zhang^2,3 , Zhi-ming Li^1,3 , Zhong-zhen Guan^1,3 and Wen-qi Jiang^1,3

¹Department of Medical Oncology, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, Guangzhou, 510060, China

²Department of Biotherapy, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, Guangzhou, 510060, China

³State Key Laboratory of Oncology in Southern China, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, Guangzhou, 510060, China

author email corresponding author email

BMC Cancer 2007, 7:235doi:10.1186/1471-2407-7-235

Published:	29 December 2007

Abstract

Background

Currently, there are no satisfactory biomarkers available to screen for diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL) or to identify patients who do not benefit from standard anti-cancer therapies. In this study, we used serum proteomic mass spectra to identify potential serum biomarkers and biomarker patterns for detecting DLBCL and patient responses to therapy.

Methods

The proteomic spectra of crude sera from 132 patients with DLBCL and 75 controls were performed by SELDI-TOF-MS and analyzed by Biomarker Patterns Software.

Results

Nine peaks were considered as potential DLBCL discriminatory biomarkers. Four peaks were considered as biomarkers for predicting the patient response to standard therapy. The proteomic patterns achieved a sensitivity of 94% and a specificity of 94% for detecting DLBCL samples in the test set of 85 samples, and achieved a sensitivity of 94% and a specificity of 92% for detecting poor prognosis patients in the test set of 66 samples.

Conclusion

These proteomic patterns and potential biomarkers are hoped to be useful in clinical applications for detecting DLBCL patients and predicting the response to therapy.