Breast cancer classification by proteomic technologies

Breast cancer is traditionally considered as a heterogeneous disease. Molecular profiling of breast cancer by gene expression studies has provided us an important tool to discriminate a number of subtypes. These breast cancer subtypes have been shown to be associated with clinica outcome and treatment response. In order to elucidate thefunctional consequences of altered gene expressions related to each breast cancer subtype, proteomic technologies can provide further insight by identifying quantitative differences at the protein level. In recent years, proteomic technologies have matured. This technology can be applied for the identification of proteins or protein profiles tofurther refine breast cancer subtypes or for discovery of novel protein biomarkers pointing towards metastatic potential or therapy resistance in a specific subtype.In this review, we summarize the current state of knowledge of proteomic research on molecular breast cancer classification and discuss important aspects of the potentialusefulness of proteomics for discovery of breast cancer-associated protein biomarkers in the clinic

Keywords:

Breast cancer , proteomic technologies , biomarkers