Autoantibody biomarkers identified by proteomics methods distinguish ovarian cancer from non-ovarian cancer with various CA-125 levels.

Purpose: CA-125 has been a valuable marker for detecting ovarian cancer, however, it is not sensitive enough to detect early-stage disease and not specific to ovarian cancer. The purpose of our study was to identify autoantibody markers that are specific to ovarian cancer regardless of CA-125 levels.

Methods: Top-down and iTRAQ quantitative proteomics methods were used to identify high-frequency autoantibodies in ovarian cancer.