Clinical biomarkers of radiation exposure would be useful both in assessing exposure to radiation due to occupation, the environment or industrial accidents, and as early markers of clinical response to radiation therapy for cancer. Using a recently developed, robust, high-throughput technique, Cynthia Menard and colleagues have shown that the composition of the serum proteome of cancer patients changes with ionizing radiation treatment.
Serum was collected before and during a course of radiation therapy from 68 patients who were diagnosed with cancer. The study population covered a wide range of diagnoses, body sites, and doses of radiotherapy. Aliquots of the fresh-frozen unfractionated sera were subjected to high-resolution surface-enhanced laser desorption and ionization time of flight (SELDI-TOF) mass-spectrometry analysis to generate proteomic profiles using an immobilized metal ion-affinity chromatography nickel-affinity chip surface. These profiles were then analysed for unique biomarker signatures using supervised classification techniques.
