Breast cancer proteomics - Differences in protein expression between estrogen receptor-positive and -negative tumors identified by tandem mass tag technology

Background: Proteomic analysis has become an effective tool in breast cancer research. In this study, we applied the new gel-free tandem mass tag (TMT) reference method for the first time in breast cancer. Materials and Methods: Proteomic analysis was used to compare 10 estrogen receptor (ER)-positive and 10 ER-negative samples. The results of the proteomic approach were validated by Western blot, immunohistochemistry and gene expression analysis. Results: 17 proteins with significant differences in expression were identified. 13 proteins were overexpressed in ER-negative tumors and 4 were overexpressed in ER-positive samples. All these proteins were characterized by relatively high cellular abundance. Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that the gel-free TMT approach allows the quantification of differences in protein expression levels. Further improvement of the sensitivity by subfractionation of the tissue should allow also the identification of low-abundance proteins and might lead to the use of this method in breast cancer research.