Journal of Gastrointestinal & Digestive System
Open Access

Abstract

The majority of tumor-related deaths are due to metastasis development. Despite the undoubted clinical importance of knowing the mechanisms of metastatic spread, the exact molecular background underlying tumor cell spreading and cell survival far from the primary tumor is still poorly understood. Elucidation of the molecular characteristics of carcinoma cells with high metastatic capacities can therefore be useful for identification of biomarkers or therapeutic targets for use in predicting or combatting development of tumor metastasis. The phenotype of metastatic cells could be much more important than their genotype in achieving discovery of novel predictive biomarkers or therapeutic targets. Hence, proteomic approaches can be widely used for this purpose.Thanks to recent advances in proteome research, to the development of new techniques and to the enormous efforts of basic researchers and clinicians, the first steps for therapy personalization in cancer patients have already been made. Candidate protein biomarkers to predict the higher probability of metastasis development have already been proposed and should be introduced into clinical practice during the next few years. However, proteome-based methods need to be further improved in order to detect proteins of interest involved in the metastatic processes, even in small samples containing low concentrations of those proteins.

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