Affiliations: [a] School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia | [b] Department of Surgery, Penang General Hospital, Penang, Malaysia
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Dr. Lay-Harn Gam, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 USM, Penang, Malaysia. Tel.: +60 604 6533888 ext. 2208; Fax: +60 604 6570017; E-mail: [email protected].
Abstract: Breast cancer is a leading cause of worldwide mortality in females. In Malaysia, breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women. Of these, the Chinese had the most number of breast cancer cases, followed by the Indian and the Malay. The most common type of breast cancer is infiltrating ductal carcinoma (IDC). A proteomic approach was used to identify protein profile changes in cancerous tissues compared with the normal tissues, the tissues were collected from patients of three different ethnicities, i.e. Chinese, Malay and Indian. Ten differentially expressed hydrophobic proteins were identified. We had evaluated the potential of these proteins as biomarker for infiltrating ducal carcinoma (IDC) and the ethnic-specific expression of these proteins was also determined. The data showed that peroxiredoxin-2, heat shock protein 60, protein disulfide isomerase and calreticulin may serve as ethnic-related potential markers for either one or combination of Chinese, Malay and Indian cohorts as their expression levels were significantly high in the cancerous tissues compared to the normal tissues in the ethnic group tested.
Keywords: Breast cancer, biological markers, ethnicity, hydrophobic proteins, proteomics
