Integrated peptide and glycan biomarker discovery using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry.

Quantitative comparison of peptides and glycans in serum is conducted using matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) to identify biomarkers. A peak selection algorithm is developed to identify a panel of integrated peptide and glycan peaks to distinguish hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cases from high-risk population of patients with chronic liver disease (CLD). Candidate peptide and glycan markers selected frequently in multiple runs of the algorithm are presented. The performance of these markers is evaluated in terms of their ability to distinguish HCC cases from patients with CLD in a blinded validation set.