| Research Abstract |
It is well established that habitual drinking is a risk factor for a variety of cancers.
Since personal and verbal reporting of alcohol use is not necessarily accurate, objective markers to assess alcohol consumption are required. The currently available markers, however, are limited in sensitivity and specificity for screening of excessive alcohol drinkers, Therefore, searches for novel markers are warranted.
Recently, surface-enhanced laser/desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (SELDI-TOF MS) has been successfully used to detect disease-associated proteins in complex biological specimens. We used the ProteinChip SELDI technology to generate comparative protein profiles of the consecutive serum samples obtained during abstinence from a total of 16 chronic alcoholic patients hospitalized for a rehabilitation program, We recognized two peaks (5.9 kD and 7.8 kD), both of which had been down regulated on admission, the expression level of which significantly increased after a one-week abstinence. These changes were also seen in non-responders of g-glutamyltransferase. These two proteins were partially purified and subjected to amino acid sequencing. Similar strategy has been applied for detection of diagnostic markers for liver cancers and colon cancers.
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