Hemoglobin as a biomarker for melanoma - short report
Ana Pedro (1)
1. Gwyntwr1386 Pharmacy, Regus Chester Business Park, Heronsway,Chester CH4 9QR, United Kingdom
anapedrolaboratories@gmail.com
Introduction
Anemia is a common condition within cancer patients affecting their survival (1). In cutaneous melanoma (CM), low blood hemoglobin concentration is associated with nodal involvement and metastatic disease. Although anemia in diagnosis is not an independent prognostic factor for survival in CM, it is associated with poor prognostic factors (2).
Also, the interstitial fluid and the deriving lymph are in direct contact with the cellular layer of each organ. Therefore, the analysis of the composition of the lymphatic fluid may provide precise pathological biochemical and cellular information about an organ including the skin (3).
For these reasons, we collected lymphatic fluid samples both from healthy patients and CM patients suffering from different stages of the disease, and submitted these samples to proteomic analysis and analyzed the expression of the different hemoglobin subunits in these samples.
Results
We found that the mascot scores, for hemoglobin subunits alpha, delta and gamma (table 1, original data files can be found at https://zenodo.org/record/6635906#.YqX5JnbMLIU) increase considerably for the melanoma patients, both non-metastatic and metastatic, in comparison to healthy patients (controls).
Curiously, hemoglobin subunits gamma, components of fetal hemoglobin (HBF), in adults restricted to a limited population of red cells called F-cells (4) appear in the metastatic melanoma patients. Also, patient 10 might be indeed a melanoma patient with undetected metastasis or that will develop metastasis in the future as it expresses HBG1 and has very high mascot scores for HBA1,HBD and HBB. Also, patient 10, shows a fragment of hemoglobin epsilon (HBE1) normally expressed in the embryonic yolk salk (5). Further exhaustive proteomic analysis with a bigger number of patients will be necessary to corroborate hemoglobin as a biomarker for melanoma.
Methods
Proteomic analysis was performed at the Rockefeller University, Proteomics Center as described in Hamidi et al., 2017 (6). Only proteins with Mascot scores of approximately 90 or >90 were considered (7).
The proteomic analysis excel files and each correspondent sample details were generously and kindly shared and donated by Dr. David Lyden, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, USA. Original data files can be found at https://zenodo.org/record/6635906#.YqX5JnbMLIU
References
1. Madeddu et al (2018). Pathogenesis and Treatment Options of Cancer Related Anemia: Perspective for a Targeted Mechanism-Based Approach. Front Physiol; 9: 1294.
2. Tas and Erturk (2018). Anemia in Cutaneous Malignant Melanoma: Low Blood Hemoglobin Level is Associated with Nodal Involvement, Metastatic Disease, and Worse Survival. Nutr Cancer, Feb-Mar 2018;70(2):236-240
3. Zawieja et al.(2019).Lymphatic Cannulation for Lymph Sampling and Molecular Delivery. J Immunol; 203(8): 2339–2350
4. Wood et al. (1975). F-Cells in the Adult: Normal Values and Levels in Individuals With Hereditary and Acquired Elevations of Hb F. Blood, Vol. 46, No.5
5. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene?Db=gene&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=3046
6. Hamidi et al. (2017) Identification of potential blood-derived extracellular vesicles biomarkers to diagnose and predict distant metastases in ER+ breast cancer patients, bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/202291;
7. http://www.matrixscience.com/help/scoring_help.html
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