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William H. Moretz III, MD; Christine G. Gourin, MD; David J. Terris, MD; Zhong-Sheng Xia, MD; Zhongmin Liu, PhD; Paul M. Weinberger, MD; Edward Chin, MD; Bao-Ling Adam, PhD

Arch Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2008;134(2):198-202.

Objective  To determine the sensitivity and specificity of surface-enhanced laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (SELDI-TOF-MS) for papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) detection.

Design  The SELDI-TOF-MS protein profiles of patients with PTC, patients with benign nodular disease (BND), and healthy controls were analyzed to determine the sensitivity and specificity of SELDI-TOF-MS assay for PTC detection. Data analysis was performed to process the spectral data and classify the disease status of the patients.

Setting  Academic tertiary care hospital.

Patients  Serum samples were collected prospectively from 7 patients with PTC, 8 patients with BND, and 7 healthy control volunteers.

Intervention  All patients diagnosed as having PTC or BND underwent thyroidectomy from October 21, 2004, to January 31, 2006.

Main Outcome Measures  Twenty-two serum samples were analyzed.

Results  Most protein peaks resolved by the SELDI-TOF-MS assay were in the range of 1 to 20 kDa. Classification tree analysis based on peak expression distinguished patients with PTC from those with BND with 85.7% sensitivity and 100% specificity. Serum samples from patients with PTC differed most significantly from those of patients with BND by the underexpression of a protein peak at 11 101 Da.

Conclusions  This pilot study demonstrates that proteomic analysis of serum protein profiles distinguishes patients with PTC from patients with BND with a high degree of sensitivity and specificity. Further investigation into the clinical utility of this technology in PTC biomarker detection and surveillance is warranted.

Author Affiliations: Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery (Drs Moretz, Gourin, Terris, Weinberger, and Adam), Center for Biotechnology and Genomic Medicine (Drs Xia, Liu, and Adam), and Department of Medicine, Section of Endocrinology (Dr Chin), Medical College of Georgia, Augusta.