Proteomic landscape of primary and metastatic brain tumors for
heterogeneity discovery
Abstract
Purpose: Brain tumors, whether primary or secondary, have limited
information about proteomic changes despite advances in the
understanding of the driver gene mutations and heterogeneity within
tumor cells. The purpose of this study is to distinguish primary and
secondary brain tumors based on proteomics. Experimental Design: We
assembled the most common primary tumors as follows: gliomas from WHO
grade II to IV with or without IDH1 mutations; and BrMs with a wide
range, including lung cancer (L.C), breast cancer (B.C), ovarian cancer
(O.C), and colorectal cancer (C.C). A total of 29 tissue samples were
analyzed by label free quantitative mass spectrometry-based proteomics.
Results: In total, 8,370 protein groups were identified, and
approximately 4,000 quantified protein groups were adopted for further
analysis. Proteomic analysis of metastatic tumors reveals conserved
features across multiple cancers. While proteomic heterogeneities were
found for discriminating low- and high-grade of gliomas, as well as IDH1
mutant and wild-type gliomas. And distinct pathway-level differences
among these two types of brain malignancies were revealed. The
characteristic pathways of BrMs focused on proliferation and
immunomodulation after colonizing the brain, whereas invasion processes
were notably activated in gliomas. Conclusions and Clinical Relevance:
We elucidated an extensive proteomic landscape of BrMs and gliomas,
providing information for the development of potential therapeutic and
diagnostic strategies for type-specific brain tumors.