Context: Small cell lung cancers (SCLC) are heterogeneous and tumours differ in growth characteristics and treatment resistance.
Objective: To get insight into the underlying protein profiles responsible for this heterogeneity, two subtypes of SCLC cells mutually differing in chemo resistance properties and growth characteristics are analysed.
Materials and methods: Two different electrophoresis approaches in combination with mass spectrometry were used to detect differences between the SCLC cell lines GLC1 and GLC1M13: IEF/SDS-PAGE as well as cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB)-SDS-PAGE.
Results: Altogether 60 non redundant differentially expressed proteins were found of which 5 were verified by Western Blot analysis.
Discussion: Most of these proteins identified are involved in processes of tumour progression. Therefore, these proteins are interesting candidates for further functional analysis.
Conclusion: Additional CTAB-SDS page is a complementary method to IEF-SDS page revealing a complete new subset of proteins differentially expressed between GLC1 and GLC1 M13 cells SCLC subtypes.