Investigation of early and advanced stages in ovarian cancer using human plasma by differential scanning calorimetry and mass spectrometry

Ovarian cancer is recognized with high mortality due to asymptomatic nature of the disease and difficulties in diagnosing early stage of the cancer. The present study evaluates the use of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) in differentiating the severity of ovarian cancer from healthy women. 47 diseased women were subdivided into four stages with respect to clinical relevance and severity. Stages I–II were regarded as early stages and stages III–IV were regarded as advanced stages. The two average transition temperatures (Tm) increased with disease severity from 64.84 and 70.32 °C (healthy) to 68.46 and 75.24 °C (stage IV), respectively. Tm were increased depending on clinical groups. In addition, the change in heat capacity was also dependent on the disease severity. To further support and investigate the nature of the proposed interactions, matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) analysis is employed. The results suggest the differences in peptide expression between early and advanced stage of ovarian cancer, affected abundant proteins in plasma. The combined DSC and MS approach was supportive in identifying a unique signature of ovarian cancer stages, and demonstrates the potential of DSC as a complementary diagnostic tool in the evaluation of early stage ovarian cancer.