OBJECTIVETo study the serum protein differential expression in acute leukemia patients and healthy control by differential protein mass spectrometry.

METHODSSerum proteins of 51 acute leukemia (AL) patients and 10 healthy donors were extracted from their peripheral blood. After removing high abundance protein, serum low abundance proteins were separated by two dimensional gel electrophoresis, the differences of serum proteins in AL patients and healthy human were identified. The protein spots with differential expression were cut out and then undergone bleaching, gel digestion and peptide extraction. The peptide mass fingerprint analysis was performed by using MALDI TOF/TOF MS. The protein database MSDB Masort retrieval program was used to evaluate the results.

RESULTSUsing Student's t test,19 statistically significant abnormal expression proteins in the serum of AL patients were found compared with the healthy controls (P < 0.05). The expression of α1-trypsin inhibitor (P < 0.01), prealbumin (P < 0.01), trypsin inhibitor (P < 0.01), apolipoprotein E (P < 0.01) and apolipoprotein A-Ⅳ (P < 0.01) decreased, while retinol binding protein (P < 0.05), globin HP2 (P < 0.05), serum lectin (P < 0.05), H factor homologue protein (P < 0.05) and serum amyloid A1 (P < 0.01) increased. Further stratified analysis found that high serum lectin expression in AL patient resulted in poor outcomes.

CONCLUSIONThere are a variety of serum proteins with differential expression in peripheral blood of AL patients. The differential expression of serum lectin is related to the therapeutic effect. The differential expression of these proteins can be used as a new diagnosis marker or prognostic indicator for acute leukemia.