Introduction: Despite apparently complete surgical resection, approximately half of resected early-stage lung cancer patients relapse and die of their disease. Adjuvant chemotherapy reduces this risk by only 5% to 8%. Thus, there is a need for better identifying who benefits from adjuvant therapy, the drivers of relapse, and novel targets in this setting.
Methods: RNA sequencing and liquid chromatography/liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry proteomics data were generated from 51 surgically resected non-small cell lung tumors with known recurrence status.
Results: We present a rationale and framework for the incorporation of high-content RNA and protein measurements into integrative biomarkers and show the potential of this approach for predicting risk of recurrence in a group of lung adenocarcinomas. In addition, we characterize the relationship between mRNA and protein measurements in lung adenocarcinoma and show that it is outcome specific.
Conclusions: Our results suggest that mRNA and protein data possess independent biological and clinical importance, which can be leveraged to create higher-powered expression biomarkers.
Keywords: Biomarkers; Lung adenocarcinoma; NSCLC; Proteogenomics; Proteomics.
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