Background: There is a strong need for prognostic biomarkers in ovarian cancer patients due to the heterogeneous responses on current treatment modalities.
Materials and methods: This study investigates the feasibility of combining laser microdissection (LMD) and surface enhanced laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry (SELDI-TOF MS) in ovarian cancer tissue to obtain protein profiles.
Results: Ideal conditions for preparing a protein lysate were determined and subsequently analysed on SELDI-TOF MS. Applying these protocols on tissue of 9 ovarian cancer patients showed different protein profiles between platinum sensitive and resistant patients.
Conclusion: This shows that combining optimised protocols for LMD with SELDI-TOF MS can be used to obtain discriminatory protein profiles. However, studies with large patient numbers and validation sets are essential to identify reliable biomarkers using this approach.