[Surface enhanced laser desorption/ionization (SELDI): proteomics technology and its application in oncology].

Proteomic is the study of proteomes and it involves the global analysis of protein expression profiles, the identification of them and their function in any tissue, organ or organism. Oncoproteomic is the application of proteomics technologies in oncology, which promises to accelerate the discovery of new therapeutics targets and useful biomarkers for diagnosis, prognostic and medical treatment of diverse diseases including cancer. In this context, SELDI (surface-enhanced laser desorption-ionization) is one of the more used techniques for the development of new tools with clinical utility, among them the discovery of new biomarker molecules that could serve as indicators of both physiological and disease states. This review covers general aspects of the proteomic techniques and particularly we describe the findings of some studies that used SELDI for the generation of proteomic patterns in order to identify potential biomarkers associated with the diagnosis and prognosis of a variety of cancers.