Contribution of proteomics to colorectal cancer diagnosis

Colorectal cancer is the second cause of cancer related death in developed countries. It is of major concern for public health authorities which are interested in large population screening for CRC, as early identification leads to decreased mortality. Unfortunately classical clinical diagnosis methods are too expensive to be applied for large screening. The development of rapid, low cost, easy and accurate tools for CRC diagnosis is needed. Biomarkers as sensitive as specific, able to achieve prognosis of CRC and correlated to clinical features still remain elusive. But the growing fields of new techniques like proteomic ones might be a suitable option to discover new specific biomarkers for CRC and for developing new tools of diagnosis. These techniques have already given new insights in various cancers and other diseases. This paper reviews the current knowledge in the fields of proteomics dedicated to CRC and more precisely to CRC diagnosis.