Endometrial cancer

Endometrial cancer begins in the layer of cells that form the inner lining (endometrium) of the uterus and is sometimes referred to as uterine cancer. The most common type of endometrial cancer is endometrioid carcinoma, accounting for more than 80% of cases, and the second most common is sarcoma (2% to 4%). It occurs most commonly after menopause with an average age of 60 for diagnosis and is the sixth most commonly occurring cancer in women. If endometrial cancer is discovered early, it can often be cured by removing the uterus surgically.

Figure 1. The volcano plot shows the adjusted p-value compared to the difference in average protein expression (NPX) for all proteins in endometrial cancer compared to all other cancers. The lollipop plot shows the top 10 most important proteins resulting from the cancer prediction model with importance scores ranging between 0 to 100.

Pan-cancer protein panel

6 proteins have been selected by the model to predict endometrial cancer (Table 1). The two top proteins for endometrial cancer (PLAT) and (TNFSF10) are both secreted to blood and the origin of tissue expression is relatively heterogeneous, including urothelial and ductal cells, respectively. Both proteins are annotated as related to cancer by UniProt and the latter has been described to be involved in apoptosis (He W et al. (2012)). In an independent study by Enroth et al (Enroth S et al. (2018)), several proteins were upregulated, although in most cases not significant, and four of these (WFDC2, IL-10, ST2 and DKK-4) are also elevated here, although not used by the model.