A proteomic profile of washing fluid from the colorectal tract to search for potential biomarkers of colon cancer

Washing fluid (WF) from the colon rectal tract after surgical resection might represent a first step in obtaining a mixture of proteins derived from the secretion of tumoral epithelial cells potentially involved in the pathological progression of tissue. In this study, we performed a proteomic analysis of colorectal WF to search for potential biomarkers of colon cancer. The outcome of this approach might open the possibility of using WF to screen for the precancerous and early stages of colorectal cancer (CRC). Samples of WFs were obtained during surgery from 35 patients submitted to colon resection for suspicious adenocarcinoma or carcinoma, while the respective controls were obtained by washing the healthy sections. WFs were immediately centrifuged, concentrated and trichloroacetic acid (TCA) was added to obtain protein pellets. After two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2DE), the protein patterns of malignant samples were compared with respective normal samples. Forty-one protein spots were found to be differentially expressed exhibiting ≥2 fold-change of mean value spot intensities. After mass spectrometry, these protein spots collapsed into 38 different proteins. Interestingly, 19 of the differentially expressed proteins identified in the study corresponded to those suggested as being potential biomarkers of CRC. In accordance with the literature, these proteins showed the same direction of change (up or down for all proteins). Our results suggest that WF has the potential of being a method for the exploration of clinical samples for biomarker and drug target discovery.