Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Jun 8, 2015; 7(10): 1312-1324
Published online Jun 8, 2015. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v7.i10.1312
Targeted proteomics for biomarker discovery and validation of hepatocellular carcinoma in hepatitis C infected patients
Gul M Mustafa, Denner Larry, John R Petersen, Cornelis J Elferink
Gul M Mustafa, Cornelis J Elferink, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX 77555-0654, United States
Denner Larry, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX 77555-0654, United States
John R Petersen, Department of Pathology School of Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX 77555-0654, United States
Author contributions: Mustafa GM and Denner L wrote the manuscript; Petersen JR and Elferink CJ reviewed the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Gul M Mustafa, PhD, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Texas Medical Branch, 301 University Boulevard, Galveston, TX 77555-0654, United States. gmmustaf@utmb.edu
Telephone: +1-409-7476046 Fax: +1-409-7729648
Received: August 15, 2014
Peer-review started: August 15, 2014
First decision: September 28, 2014
Revised: February 14, 2015
Accepted: March 5, 2015
Article in press: March 9, 2015
Published online: June 8, 2015
Processing time: 292 Days and 11.6 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: The projected rise in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is largely attributed to hepatitis C virus infection with onset of HCC being a latent consequence occurring decades after the original infection. However, other environmental risk factors including alcohol, tobacco, and diet-derived insults that cause liver injury increase the incidence of HCC. The poor prognosis associated with late stage diagnosis renders successful intervention difficult. The methodology described in this review article shows the feasibility of a highly multiplexed manner using multiple reaction monitoring using internal standard peptides to more easily quantify proteins, which narrows the time between discovery and validation in the biomarker pipeline in general.