Optimization of methods for diagnostics and prediction of lung cancer, which occupies a leading position in the structure of oncological diseases, still remains an important task. In this study we have investigated the level of cytokines and acute-phase proteins in saliva of patients with lung cancer in dependence on the tumor size, and distant and regional metastasis. The case-control study included 121 patients, which were divided into 3 groups: the main group (patients with diagnosed lung cancer, n = 70), the reference group (patients with non-malignant lung pathologies, n = 12) and the control group (conditionally healthy individuals, n = 39). All participants answered the questionnaire, underwent biochemical study of saliva and histological verification of the diagnosis. The content of IL-2 and IL-4 in saliva reduced in both lung cancer and inflammatory lung diseases, whereas the levels of IL-18, IL-8 and TNF-a decreasd in lung cancer and increased in non-malignant pathologies. Tumor progression was accompanied by an increase in the level of proinflammatory cytokines (IL-6, IL-8, IL-18, TNF-a), whereas the levels of IL-2, IL-4 and IL-10 decreased. Although saliva levels of C-reactive protein and tumor markers increased in lung cancer they did reach the level of statistical significance as compared with the reference group. Thus, with the only exception of IL-2 and IL-4, the saliva levels of cytokines in lung cancer patients insignificantly differ from the control group. However, the recognzied dynamics of the saliva cytokines level in patients with distant and regional metastasis opens the prospect of using these parameters for monitoring the treatment and controlling relapse occurrence.

In this study, the proteomic approach based on high performance liquid chromatography connected with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) and bioinformatics analysis were applied to identify differentially abundant proteins in chorionic villus samples (CVS) from women with blighted ovum and normal pregnancy. We identified about 600 proteins in the solubilized fraction of CVS. Comparative proteomic analysis revealed differences in the content (Average Normalized Abundances) of 187 proteins in blighted ovum. These included 134 down-regulated proteins and 53 up-regulated proteins. According to bioinformatics analysis these proteins participate in a variety of metabolic processes, including alcohol and tricarboxylic acid metabolism, response to endoplasmic reticulum stress, small molecular catabolic process, cellular respiration, and others. Proteins that demonstrated growing content in blighted ovum were mainly encoded by genes located on chromosomes 7 and 16 whereas proteins which demonstrated reducing abundance were mainly encoded by genes located on chromosomes 1, 2, and 11. We also revealed changes in the content of proteins encoded by genes located on the human chromosome 18; they are involved in apoptotic and drug metabolic processes with an important role in early pregnancy loss. Our pilot results demonstrate the efficiency of the LC-MS/MS approach for detecting the differences at the qualitative and semi-quantitative levels in the protein profiles of the CVS at anembryonic pregnancy compared to normal gestation. We conclude that globally profiled and differentially regulated proteins of CVS are helpful in obtaining molecular insights into biological processes of the pregnancy pathology.