Compositions, methods and kits for diagnosis of lung cancer

A method of determining the likelihood that a pulmonary nodule in a subject is not lung cancer, comprising:

• (a) contacting a blood sample obtained from the subject with a proteolytic enzyme to produce peptide fragments from a panel of proteins present in the blood sample, wherein the panel comprises ALDOA_HUMAN, FRIL_HUMAN, LG3BP_HUMAN, TSP1_HUMAN, COIA1_HUMAN, PEDF_HUMAN, MASP1_HUMAN, GELS_HUMAN, LUM_HUMAN, C163A_HUMAN and PTPRJ_HUMAN;
• (b) combining the produced peptide fragments from the panel from step (a) with labeled, synthetic peptide fragments which correspond to the produced peptide fragments from the panel;
• (c) performing selected reaction monitoring mass spectrometry to measure the abundance of the peptide fragments from step (b);
• (d) calculating a probability of lung cancer score based on the peptide fragment measurements of step (c) and one protein-protein interaction comprising peptide fragments produced from FRIL_HUMAN and COIA1_HUMAN;
• (e) ruling out lung cancer for the subject if the score in step (d) is lower than a pre-determined score;
• and
• (f) performing image monitoring on the subject for at least a one year period if the pulmonary nodule is determined not to be lung cancer.