Search for Marker Molecules of Diseases by Tandem MS

Abstract

Neuroblastoma is a tumor of nerve tissue in childhood. Mass-screening program for early detection of neuroblastoma was stopped in Japan because of its inability of precise clarification of malignant tumor. We aimed to find out new tumor markers which could be used in future mass-screening, and have succeeded to establish LC-MS/MS-based quantification of nine urinary catecholamine metabolites. The standard curves of these nine metabolites showed high linearity and reproducibility, thus we applied them to measure the content of the metabolites in patient samples. The results showed a possibility that the ratio of DOPAC and normetanephrine could be a marker of tumors whereas each metabolite alone could not. In addition, we made a survey of candidate neuroblastoma markers in urine using a Q-q-TOF/MS. We found fifteen increased and eight decreased ion peaks in seven tumor samples. We will confirm their ability as diagnostic markers of neuroblastoma by increasing case numbers.