Cervical cancer is one of the top malignancies in women around the globe, which still holds its place despite being preventable at early stages. Gynecological conditions, even maladies like cervical cancer, still experience scrutiny from society owing to prevalent taboo and invasive screening methods, especially in developing economies. Additionally, current diagnoses lack specificity and sensitivity, which prolong diagnosis until it is too late. Advances in omics-based technologies aid in discovering differential multi-omics profiles between healthy individuals and cancer patients, which could be utilized for the discovery of body fluid-based biomarkers. Body fluids are a promising potential alternative for early disease detection and counteracting the problems of invasiveness while also serving as a pool of potential biomarkers. In this review, we will provide details of the body fluids-based biomarkers that have been reported in cervical cancer. Here, we have presented our perspective on proteomics for global biomarker discovery by addressing several pertinent problems, including the challenges that are confronted in cervical cancer. Further, we also used bioinformatic methods to undertake a meta-analysis of significantly up-regulated biomolecular profiles in CVF from cervical cancer patients. Our analysis deciphered alterations in the biological pathways in CVF such as immune response, glycolytic processes, regulation of cell death, regulation of structural size, protein polymerization disease, and other pathways that can cumulatively contribute to cervical cancer malignancy. We believe, more extensive research on such biomarkers, will speed up the road to early identification and prevention of cervical cancer in the near future.
Keywords: CIN—cervical intraepithelial neoplasia; CSCC—cervical squamous cell carcinoma; CVF—cervicovaginal fluid; CaCx—cervical cancer; DIGE—difference gel electrophoresis; ELISA—enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay; HPV—Human Papillomavirus; LC-MS/MS—liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry; LFQ—label-free quantification; MALDI—TOF—matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization—time of flight; MRM—multiple reaction monitoring; PRM—parallel reaction monitoring; iTRAQ—isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantification.