Screening of serum biomarkers in childhood acute lymphocyte leukemia by SELDI technique: a preliminary study

Objective Acute lymphocyte leukemia is one of the diseases with high incidence and mortality in children. New technologies for the study of acute lymphocyte leukemia proteomics are urgently needed. The aim of this study was to screen serum biomarkers in patients with acute lymphocyte leukemia using surface-enhanced laser desorption and ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (SELDI-TOF-MS) technique. Methods Proteomic spectra were generated by mass spectrometry in 79 cases, including 44 cases of pathologically confirmed acute lymphocyte leukemia aged 2 to 14 years, and 35 healthy controls(aged 2 to 13 years). Seventy-nine spectra obtained were used to train and develop a decision tree classification algorithm. Results A total of 7 distinguished proteomic peaks were detected. All 7 peaks were used to build a proteomic pattern. The results yielded a sensitivity of 88.6%(39/44)、specificity of 82.9%(29/35). Conclusions SELDI-TOF-MS offers a unique platform for the proteomic detection of childhood acute lymphocyte leukemia. It also offers a noninvasive method for further study of the proteomic changs in the development and progression of leukemia.