Identification of proteins responsible for adriamycin resistance in breast cancer cells using proteomics analysis

Chemoresistance is a poor prognostic factor in breast cancer and is a major obstacle to the successful treatment of patients receiving chemotherapy. However, the precise mechanism of resistance remains unclear. In this study, a pair of breast cancer cell lines, MCF-7 and its adriamycin-resistant counterpart MCF-7/ADR was used to examine resistance-dependent cellular responses and to identify potential therapeutic targets. We applied nanoflow liquid chromatography (nLC) and tandem mass tags (TmT) quantitative mass spectrometry to distinguish the differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) between the two cell lines. Bioinformatics analyses were used to identify functionally active proteins and networks. 80 DEPs were identified with either up- or down-regulation. Basing on the human protein-protein interactions (PPI), we have retrieved the associated functional interaction networks for the DEPs and analyzed the biological functions. Six different signaling pathways and most of the DEPs strongly linked to chemoresistance, invasion, metastasis development, proliferation, and apoptosis. The identified proteins in biological networks served to resistant drug and to select critical candidates for validation analyses by western blot. The glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD), gamma-glutamyl cyclotransferase (GGCT), isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 (NADP1, soluble)(IDH1), isocitrate dehydrogenase 2 (NADP1, mitochondrial) (IDH2) and glutathione S-transferase pi 1(GSTP1), five of the critical components of GSH pathway, contribute to chemoresistance.