Ampholine immobilized polymer microspheres for increasing coverage of human urinary proteome

Synthesis of zwitterionic polymer modified graphene oxide for hydrophilic enrichment of N-glycopeptides from urine of healthy subjects and patients with lung adenocarcinoma

As one of the most common and important post-translational modifications, protein N-glycosylation plays essential roles in many biological processes and have long been considered closely correlated with the occurrence and progression of multiple diseases. Systematic characterization of these disease-related protein N-glycosylation is one of the most convenient ways for new diagnostic biomarker and therapeutic drug target discovering. However, the biological samples are extremely complex and the abundance of N-glycoproteins are especially low, which make highly efficient N-glycoprotein/glycopeptide enrichment before mass spectrometry analysis a prerequisite. In this work, a new type of hydrophilic material (GO-pDMAPS) was prepared by in situ growth of linear zwitterionic polymer chains on the surface of GO and it was successfully applied for N-glycopeptide enrichment from human urine. Due to the excellent hydrophilicity and the facilitate interactions between this GO-pDMAPS and the targets, a total of 1426 N-glycosylated sites corresponding to 766 N-glycoproteins as well as 790 N-glycosylation sites corresponding to 470 N-glycoproteins were enriched and identified from urine of healthy subjects and patients with lung adenocarcinoma, respectively. Among which, 27 N-glycoproteins were expressed exclusively and 4 N-glycoproteins were upregulated at least 3 times comparing with the healthy group, demonstrating the tremendous potential of this new hydrophilic material for large scale and in depth N-glycoproteome research.

Urinary proteomics for kidney dysfunction: insights and trends

Introduction: Kidney dysfunction poses a high burden on patients and health care systems. Early detection and accurate prediction of kidney disease progression remains a major challenge. Compared to existing clinical parameters, urinary proteomics has the potential to reveal molecular alterations within the kidney that may alter its function before the onset of clinical symptoms. Thus, urinary proteomics has greater prognostic potential for assessment of kidney dysfunction progression.Areas covered: Advances in urinary proteomics for major causes of kidney dysfunction are discussed. The application of urinary extracellular vesicles for studying kidney dysfunction are discussed. Technological advances in urinary proteomics are discussed. The literature was identified using a database search for titles containing 'proteom*' and 'urin*' and published within the past 5 years. Retrieved literature was manually filtered to retain kidney dysfunctions-related studies.Expert opinion: Despite major advances, diagnosis by urinary proteomics has not been fully applied in any clinical settings. This could be attributed to the complex nature of kidney diseases, in addition to the constraints on study power and feasibility of incorporating mass spectrometry techniques in daily routine analysis. Nevertheless, we are confident that advances in urinary proteomics will soon provide superior insights into kidney disease beyond existing clinical parameters.