Purpose
The aim of this pilot study was to conduct a nontargeted exploratory proteomics profiling analysis on sera obtained from patients diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) with the goal of identifying disease-specific biomarkers. Experimental design: Sera from 87 participants (57 chemotherapy-naïve diffuse DLBCL patients, 30 controls frequency-matched by age group and World Health Organization (WHO) BMI categories) that were part of a large San Francisco Bay Area case-control study of non-Hodgkin lymphoma were analyzed by liquid chromatography combined with tandem mass spectrometry.
Results
Thirty-five proteins (p-adjusted <0.05) were identified as differentially abundant between the DLBCL patients at various disease stages as compared to the controls. Of these, five proteins were randomly selected for further confirmation by ELISA: adiponectin (AdipoQ), cluster of differentiation 14 (CD14), heparin sulfate proteoglycan core protein (HSPG2), extracellular matrix 1 (ECM1), and alpha-1-antichymotrypsin (ACT). These proteins were statistically significantly elevated by 68.8, 37.0, 61.6, 68.0, and 32.0%, respectively, in DLBCL patient sera as compared to controls.