Convergence of the proteomic pattern in cancer

MOTIVATION On the histological level the differentiation of normal epithelial tissues is well known. The phenomenon of dedifferentiation, which occurs as cells develop towards malignancy is also well described. To identify an epithelial tumor-specific proteomic profile as well as to measure the proximities between we used data from tumor tissue and adjacent normal tissue microdissected from head and neck and colon cancer samples which were analyzed using ProteinChip technology and performed a bioinformatic meta-analysis on the resulting four complex datasets. RESULTS All four groups could be identified based on their proteomic signatures and the tumor tissues were found to be more similar to one another than to the normal epithelial tissue from which they progressed. This study shows at the proteomic level that changes in the histological features of tumors as compared to the tissues from which they arise are reflected in the convergence of proteomic pattern during the development to cancer.