Characterization of secreted proteins in HepG2 and LO2 cells by Raman spectroscopy

Secreted proteins, the promising source of biomarkers for early detection and diagnosis of cancer, have received considerable attention. Raman spectroscopy and principal component analysis (PCA) were used to characterize the secreted proteins collected from the cell cultures of human hepatoma cell line HepG2 and normal human liver cell line LO2 in this paper. We found the major difference of secreted proteins Raman spectra between HepG2 and LO2 cells were in the range of 1200cm(-1)-1800cm(-1). Compared with LO2 cells, some significant changes based on secondary structure of secreted proteins in HepG2 cells were observed, including the increase in the relative intensity of the band at 1004cm(-1), 1445cm(-1), 1674cm(-1) and the decrease at 1074cm(-1). These variations of Raman bands indicated that the species and conformation of secreted proteins in HepG2 cells changed. The measured Raman spectra of the two groups were separated into two distinct clusters with no overlap and high specificity and sensitivity by PCA. These results show that the combination of Raman spectroscopy and PCA analysis may be a powerful tool for distinguishing the secreted proteins between human hepatoma cells and normal human liver cells, provide a new thought to analyze the secreted proteins from cancer cells and find a novel cancer biomarker.