Abstract

VN Saritha , Jestin K George , Abdul Jaleel , Arun Surendran , Meenakshi Saravana kumar MC Kalavathy , Thara Somanathan , P Rema K Sujathan

Cervical cancer continues to take extra ordinary toll on the lives of women in India, which has been attributed to the lack of systematically organized population screening programmes. Cost effective screening tools are yet to be identified for low resource countries. Proteomic studies constitute a reliable way to determine the biological alterations induced by HPV infection. Aim of the study was to identify the differentially expressed proteins in the exfoliated cells of Squamous Cell Carcinoma. Protein extracted from exfoliated squamous cells of normal smears and squamous carcinoma cells was analyzed by using Liquid Chromatography-Mass spectrometry method and the DNA was subjected for multiplex PCR for HPV status. The malignant samples were positive for oncogenic HPV. Proteome profiling revealed unique expression of 104 proteins in SCC while 20 proteins were found up-regulated and 64 proteins were down regulated. Upregulated proteins include different isoforms of cytokeratin, ras related proteins, annexin, endoplasmin, vimentin, gelsolin, actin and heats hock proteins etc which can be used to define novel markers of cervical intra epithelial neoplasia