Extraction of the breast cancer tissue under intraoperative radiotherapy and investigating their proteome by proteomics technique

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among Iranian women and women in the world. The aim of radiotherapy (radiation therapy) is to eliminate the maximum of cancer cells with minimal damage to healthy tissue. Intraoperative radiation therapy (IORT) can be utilized to treat a small area of tissue without any damages. In this method, because of DNA damage and initiation of the apoptosis process, the tumor cells (target tissue) are destructed.

Four Breast Cancer (BC) patients as a pilot study were treated by 21 Gy (Radical dose). Two-dimensional electrophoresis (2D-PAGE) and Progenesis Same Spots v3.2 were performed to study the proteomic of the IORT-treated tumor bed.

Approximately 523 protein spots were detected. A total of 343 protein spots showed different expression. among which, 141 spots decrease in-expression level, while, the remaining 191 spots were up-regulated.

Our findings indicate that Caspase3, P53, BID, BAX, and BCL2 may be key proteins in the IORT-treated tumor bed.