Quantification of thyroglobulin, a low-abundance serum protein, by immunoaffinity peptide enrichment and tandem mass spectrometry

Quantification of serum tumor markers plays an important role in determining whether patients treated for cancer require further therapy. Whereas large-scale proteomic efforts

Immunoaffinity peptide enrichment-tandem mass spectrometry can detect tryptic peptides of thyroglobulin at picomolar concentrations while also digesting the endogenous immunoglobulins that can potentially interfere with traditional immunoassays. Our observations suggest a general analytical strategy for using immunoaffinity isolation together with tandem mass spectrometry to quantify tumor antigens and other low-abundance proteins in human serum.

We identified 3 peptides in tryptic digests of thyroglobulin that were detected at low concentrations by tandem mass spectrometry, raised polyclonal antibodies to those peptides, and used the antibodies to extract the 3 corresponding peptides from tryptic digests of human serum. We quantified each endogenous peptide using LC-MS/MS and multiple reaction monitoring with external calibrators.

The detection limit for endogenous thyroglobulin in serum was 2.6 microg/L (4 pmol/L). Direct comparison with immunoassay revealed good correlation (r(2) = 0.81). Conclusions: Immunoaffinity peptide enrichment-tandem mass spectrometry can detect tryptic peptides of thyroglobulin at picomolar concentrations while also digesting the endogenous immunoglobulins that can potentially interfere with traditional immunoassays. Our observations suggest a general analytical strategy for using immunoaffinity isolation together with tandem mass spectrometry to quantify tumor antigens and other low-abundance proteins in human serum.