Yu Sun,1,* Jiaxuan Sun,1,* Xiaona Gao,1 Tiefeng Shi,1 Maoqing Wang2 

1Department of Thyroid Surgery, The Second Affiliated Hospital, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Nutrition and Food Hygiene, School of Public Health, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, People’s Republic of China

*These authors contributed equally to this work

Correspondence: Tiefeng Shi, Department of Thyroid Surgery, The Second Affiliated Hospital, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, People’s Republic of China, Email shitiefeng1970@163.com Maoqing Wang, Department of Nutrition and Food Hygiene, School of Public Health, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, People’s Republic of China, Tel +86-451-87502876, Fax +86-451-87502885, Email wang_maoqing@126.com

Background: To identify biomarkers of papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) and explore the possible pathogenic mechanism.
Methods: This study included five patients with PTC. Protein expression of cancer tissues and adjacent normal thyroid tissues from each patient were analyzed by TMT proteomics technology. Differentially expressed proteins were identified, and functional annotation of differentially expressed proteins was performed by bioinformatics and pathway enrichment analysis.
Results: A total of 639 differentially expressed proteins were identified, including 278 upregulated and 361 downregulated proteins. Six upregulated proteins were identified as potential specific markers of PTC.
Conclusion: Differentially expressed proteins may represent new molecular markers of PTC. These differentially expressed proteins and the related pathways may provide new insights into the pathogenic mechanisms of PTC.

Keywords: papillary thyroid carcinoma, TMT, proteomics, PRM, molecular markers