title: Peptidomics of urine and other biofluids for cancer diagnostics.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide. The low diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of most current cancer biomarkers make early cancer diagnosis a challenging task. The comprehensive study of peptides and small proteins in a living system, known as "peptidomics," represents an alternative technological approach to the discovery of potential biomarkers for the assessment of a wide variety of pathologies. This review examines the current status of peptidomics for several body fluids, with a focus on urine, for cancer diagnostics applications.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  Several studies have used high-throughput technologies to characterize the peptide content of different body fluids. Because of its noninvasive collection and high stability, urine is a valuable source of candidate cancer biomarkers. A wide variety of preanalytical issues concerning patient selection and sample handling need to be considered, because not doing so can affect the quality of the results by introducing bias and artifacts. Optimization of both the analytical strategies and the processing of bioinformatics data is also essential to minimize the false-discovery rate.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Peptidomics-based studies of urine and other body fluids have yielded a number of biomolecules and peptide panels with potential for diagnosing different types of cancer, especially of the ovary, prostate, and bladder. Large-scale studies are needed to validate these molecules as cancer biomarkers.
authors.affiliation: Servei d'Anàlisis Clíniques, Hospital Universitari Son Espases, Palma de Mallorca, Spain;
authors.forename: Josep Miquel
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Bauça
authors.affiliation: Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, Joseph and Wolf Lebovic Health Centre, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada;
authors.forename: Eduardo
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Martínez-Morillo
authors.affiliation: Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Department of Clinical Biochemistry, Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. ediamandis@mtsinai.on.ca.
authors.forename: Eleftherios P
authors.initials: EP
authors.lastname: Diamandis
mesh_terms: D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor / Q000032:analysis* / Q000652:urine; D001826:Body Fluids / Q000737:chemistry*; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000737:chemistry / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000652:urine; D010455:Peptides / Q000032:analysis* / Q000652:urine; D040901:Proteomics
chemical_list: D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; D010455:Peptides