Breast cancer is one of the most frequent and deadly cancers
in industrialized countries. The identification of accurate biomarkers
that improve the screening, diagnosis, prognostication
and prediction of therapeutic response or toxicity, and
the identification of novel molecular therapeutic targets are
crucial. Today, high-throughput molecular techniques permit
investigators to systematically interrogate the genome,
transcriptome, and proteome of cancer cells. During the past
decade, mRNA expression profiling has been successfully
applied to the molecular characterization of breast cancers.
Application of proteomics-based techniques is also considered
crucial for detecting new biomarkers. In this review, we
present the proteomics-based methods that have been applied
to date to breast cancer samples for diagnostic and
prognostic purposes. Despite their current limits, these pioneering
techniques are promising. The most important results
as well as the current limitations and perspectives are
summarized and discussed. |