Plasma proteomic analysis of systemic lupus erythematosus patients using liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry with label-free quantification.

Rashmi Madda,Wei-Hsin Sun,Shir-Ly Huang,Shih-Chang Lin

doi:10.7717/peerj.4730

Abstract

ContextSystemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease with unknown etiology.ObjectiveHuman plasma is comprised of over 10 orders of magnitude concentration of proteins and tissue leakages. The changes in the abundance of these proteins have played an important role in various human diseases. Therefore, the research objective of this study is to identify the significantly altered expression levels of plasma proteins from SLE patients compared with healthy controls using proteomic analysis. The plasma proteome profiles of both SLE patients and controls were compared.MethodsA total of 19 active SLE patients and 12 healthy controls plasma samples were analyzed using high-resolution electrospray ionization liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-ESI-MS/MS) followed by label-free quantification.ResultsA total of 19 proteins showed a significant level of expression in the comparative LC-ESI-MS/MS triplicate analysis; among these, 14 proteins had >1.5- to three-fold up-regulation and five had <0.2- to 0.6-fold down-regulation. Gene ontology and DAVID (Database Annotation Visualization, and Integrated Discovery) functional enrichment analysis revealed that these proteins are involved in several important biological processes including acute phase inflammatory responses, complement activation, hemostasis, and immune system regulation.ConclusionOur study identified a group of differentially expressed proteins in the plasma of SLE patients that are involved in the imbalance of the immune system and inflammatory responses. Therefore, these findings may have the potential to be used as prognostic/diagnostic markers for SLE disease assessment or disease monitoring.

Highlights

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic autoimmune disease involving multiple organs that are characterized by excessive production of antinuclear antibodies (Crispın et al, 2010)
Rapid advances in proteomic technology have led to the identification of several novel protein biomarkers related to both SLE and lupus nephritis (LN); these include monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) (Marks et al, 2010), the tumor necrosis factor-like weak inducer (TWEAK) (Schwartz, Michaelson & Putterman, 2007), transferrin (Suzuki et al, 2007), various interleukins and TNF-a (Almoallim et al, 2012) proteins
We have attempted to use liquid chromatography (LC)-ESI-mechanisms. Tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) to identify proteins that show significant alterations in expression levels among 19 SLE patients compared to 12 healthy controls

Summary

Introduction

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic autoimmune disease involving multiple organs that are characterized by excessive production of antinuclear antibodies (Crispın et al, 2010). Rapid advances in proteomic technology have led to the identification of several novel protein biomarkers related to both SLE and lupus nephritis (LN); these include monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) (Marks et al, 2010), the tumor necrosis factor-like weak inducer (TWEAK) (Schwartz, Michaelson & Putterman, 2007), transferrin (Suzuki et al, 2007), various interleukins and TNF-a (Almoallim et al, 2012) proteins. These organ-specific biomarkers do not serve only as markers of lupus and of primary organ participation in lupus.

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