Serum diagnosis of diffuse large B-cell lymphomas and further identification of response to therapy using SELDI-TOF-MS and tree analysis patterning

Background: Currently, there are no satisfactory biomarkers available to screen for diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL) or to identify patients who do not benefit from standard anti-cancer therapies. In this study, we used serum proteomic mass spectra to identify potential serum biomarkers and biomarker patterns for detecting DLBCL and patient responses to therapy. Methods: The proteomic spectra of crude sera from 132 patients with DLBCL and 75 controls were performed by SELDI-TOF-MS and analyzed by Biomarker Patterns Software. Results: Nine peaks were considered as potential DLBCL discriminatory biomarkers. Four peaks were considered as biomarkers for predicting the patient response to standard therapy. The proteomic patterns achieved a sensitivity of 94% and a specificity of 94% for detecting DLBCL samples in the test set of 85 samples, and achieved a sensitivity of 94% and a specificity of 92% for detecting poor prognosis patients in the test set of 66 samples. Conclusion: These proteomic patterns and potential biomarkers are hoped to be useful in clinical applications for detecting DLBCL patients and predicting the response to therapy.