Accelerating Breast Cancer Biomarker Discovery by Mass Spectrometry Proteomics and Current Bioinformatics Tools

Across the globe, we can continue to observe a rise in the prevalence of breast cancer. The World Health Organization registered 600,000 cases of death due to breast cancer in 2021 and estimated that there would be 1 in every 8 women diagnosed with breast cancer in the next 10 years. Studies have discovered the role of proteins in the pathways that affect breast cancer but have not found a potential biomarker effective for all types, especially for triple-negative breast cancer. It remains a challenge to detect and treat breast cancer, especially if found in the later uncurable stage. With this, proteomics becomes a practical approach to screening new protein biomarkers for breast cancer diagnosis, therapy, and disease control. Proteomics covers the study of the entire protein, and its modification has been leading the race in breast cancer biomarker discovery made possible through the advancement of mass spectrometry and various bioinformatics tools. The combination has brought novel information being the fastest yet simplest approach for deep, comprehensive, and high throughput approach. This review article will give an overview of these trending online tools for proteomics research while citing examples of their utility with known clinical breast cancer biomarkers.