Integrated Proteomics Based on 2D Gel Electrophoresis and Mass Spectrometry with Validations: Identification of a Biomarker Compendium for Oral Submucous Fibrosis-An Indian Study

• Published in: Journal of personalized medicine Vol. 12; no. 2; p. 208
• Main Authors: Venugopal, Divyambika Catakapatri, Ravindran, Soundharya, Shyamsundar, Vidyarani, Sankarapandian, Sathasivasubramanian, Krishnamurthy, Arvind, Sivagnanam, Ananthi, Madhavan, Yasasve, Ramshankar, Vijayalakshmi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 03-02-2022; MDPI
• Subjects: Antibodies; Biomarkers; Connective tissue; Fibrosis; Gel electrophoresis; Heat shock proteins; Hsp70 protein; Immunohistochemistry; Mass spectrometry; Mass spectroscopy; Oral carcinoma; Oral squamous cell carcinoma; Oxidative stress; Patients; Peptides; Precision medicine; Protein expression; Proteins; Proteomics; Public health; Quality of life; Scientific imaging; United States > US; Sweden; OSMF; gene ontology; immunohistochemistry; proteomics; MALDI
• ISSN: 2075-4426; 2075-4426
• DOI: 10.3390/jpm12020208

Oral Submucous Fibrosis (OSMF) is a chronic debilitating disease more frequently found in the South East Asian population. This disease poses a public health priority, as it is grouped under oral potentially malignant disorders, with malignant transformation rates of around 7 to 13%. Hence, early identification of high-risk OSMF patients is of the utmost importance to prevent malignant transformation. Proteomic expression profiling is a promising method for identifying differentially expressed proteins for disease prognosis and risk stratification in OSMF. In this study, overexpressed proteins in OSMF, OSMF transformed into oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) and normal tissues were evaluated by proteomic analysis using two-dimensional electrophoresis (2DE) and mass spectrometry, which revealed 23 upregulated proteins. Validation was done using immunohistochemistry for three secretory proteins, namely 14-3-3ε (
= 130), carbonic anhydrase 1 (CA 1) (
= 125) and heat shock protein 70 (HSP 70) (
= 117), which showed significant overexpression in OSMF, OSCC compared to normal. The present study is the first of its kind in India to the best of our knowledge, assessing the altered expression of proteins in OSMF and OSMF which has undergone malignant transformation, obtaining a better knowledge of the molecular pathways involved in the disease progression. The current study shows that the biomarkers studied can be potentially useful for risk stratification of OSMF to OSCC serving as novel targets for therapeutic intervention. Clinical validation of the targets can further pave way for precision medicine to improve the quality of life in OSMF patients.