Proteomics Biomarker Development Laboratory (Aka IRB 1999-514)

OBJECTIVES:

• Identify tumor antigens that induce a humoral response in patients with cancer.
• Identify tumor-secreted proteins by special analysis in culture, and evaluate their expression patterns in tumors and preneoplastic lesions to further assess their potential specificity.
• Determine serum positivity and specificity of potential markers for early detection of cancer.

OUTLINE: This is a multicenter study.

Patients and healthy participants undergo blood collection. Patients with suspected or newly diagnosed disease undergo a second blood collection between 4-10 weeks after surgery (but before any additional cytotoxic therapy or radiotherapy) provided they had a surgical resection with negative margin. All patients are asked questions about family history of cancer, the development of their cancer, other medical history, past and present smoking history, and menstrual period for females.

DNA is extracted from the blood and from patient tumor tissue samples obtained during surgery. Immunohistochemistry (including polymerase chain reaction) and in situ hybridization are used to analyze protein expression patterns, after proteins are identified by mass spectrometry and amino acid sequencing.