Quantitative proteomic analysis of sokotrasterol sulfate-stimulated primary human endothelial cells

Sokotrasterol Sulfate Suppresses IFN-γ-Induced PD-L1 Expression by Inhibiting JAK Activity

PD-1/PD-L1 monoclonal antibodies exhibit promising therapeutic effectiveness in multiple cancers. However, developing a simple and efficient non-antibody treatment strategy using the PD-1/PD-L1 signaling pathway still remains challenging. In this study, we developed a flow cytometry assay to screen bioactive compounds with PD-L1 inhibitory activity. A total of 409 marine natural products were screened, and sokotrasterol sulfate (SKS) was found to efficiently suppress the IFN-γ-induced PD-L1 expression. SKS sensitizes the tumor cells to antigen-specific T-cell killing in the T cell-tumor cell coculture system. Mechanistically, SKS directly targeted Janus kinase (JAK) to inhibit the downstream activation of signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) and the subsequent transcription of PDL1. Our findings highlight the immunological role of SKS that may act as a basis for a potential immunotherapeutic agent.

Cdk5 and GSK3β inhibit fast endophilin-mediated endocytosis

Endocytosis mediates the cellular uptake of micronutrients and cell surface proteins. Fast Endophilin-mediated endocytosis, FEME, is not constitutively active but triggered upon receptor activation. High levels of growth factors induce spontaneous FEME, which can be suppressed upon serum starvation. This suggested a role for protein kinases in this growth factor receptor-mediated regulation. Using chemical and genetic inhibition, we find that Cdk5 and GSK3β are negative regulators of FEME. They antagonize the binding of Endophilin to Dynamin-1 and to CRMP4, a Plexin A1 adaptor. This control is required for proper axon elongation, branching and growth cone formation in hippocampal neurons. The kinases also block the recruitment of Dynein onto FEME carriers by Bin1. As GSK3β binds to Endophilin, it imposes a local regulation of FEME. Thus, Cdk5 and GSK3β are key regulators of FEME, licensing cells for rapid uptake by the pathway only when their activity is low.

Sequence-Specific Model for Peptide Retention Time Prediction in Strong Cation Exchange Chromatography

The development of a peptide retention prediction model for strong cation exchange (SCX) separation on a Polysulfoethyl A column is reported. Off-line 2D LC-MS/MS analysis (SCX-RPLC) of S. cerevisiae whole cell lysate was used to generate a retention dataset of ∼30 000 peptides, sufficient for identifying the major sequence-specific features of peptide retention mechanisms in SCX. In contrast to RPLC/hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) separation modes, where retention is driven by hydrophobic/hydrophilic contributions of all individual residues, SCX interactions depend mainly on peptide charge (number of basic residues at acidic pH) and size. An additive model (incorporating the contributions of all 20 residues into the peptide retention) combined with a peptide length correction produces a 0.976 R² value prediction accuracy, significantly higher than the additive models for either HILIC or RPLC. Position-dependent effects on peptide retention for different residues were driven by the spatial orientation of tryptic peptides upon interaction with the negatively charged surface functional groups. The positively charged N-termini serve as a primary point of interaction. For example, basic residues (Arg, His, Lys) increase peptide retention when located closer to the N-terminus. We also found that hydrophobic interactions, which could lead to a mixed-mode separation mechanism, are largely suppressed at 20-30% of acetonitrile in the eluent. The accuracy of the final Sequence-Specific Retention Calculator (SSRCalc) SCX model (∼0.99 R² value) exceeds all previously reported predictors for peptide LC separations. This also provides a solid platform for method development in 2D LC-MS protocols in proteomics and peptide retention prediction filtering of false positive identifications.

Endo-MitoEGFP mice: a novel transgenic mouse with fluorescently marked mitochondria in microvascular endothelial cells

Blood vessel-specific fluorescent transgenic mice are excellent tools to study the development of the vasculature and angiogenic processes. There is growing interest in the biological processes relevant to endothelial cells but limited tools exist to selectively evaluate subcellular functions of this cell type in vivo. Here, we report a novel transgenic animal model that expresses mitochondrially targeted enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) via the Hb9 promoter, a homeobox transcription factor with limited known involvement in the vasculature. Random integration of the transgene, containing the entire mouse Hb9 promoter, was found to be expressed in a variety of vascularised tissues. Further inspection revealed that Mito-EGFP localizes to the endothelial cells (ECs) of a subset of microvascular blood vessels, especially in the central nervous system (CNS), heart, spleen, thymus, lymph nodes and skin. We demonstrate the utility of this novel transgenic mouse, named Endo-MitoEGFP, in the detection, imaging, and isolation of microvascular ECs and evaluation of EC mitochondrial function isolated from adult animals. These transgenic mice will be useful to studies of ECs in development, physiology, and pathology.

Engineering vascularized tissues using natural and synthetic small molecules

Vascular growth and remodeling are complex processes that depend on the proper spatial and temporal regulation of many different signaling molecules to form functional vascular networks. The ability to understand and regulate these signals is an important clinical need with the potential to treat a wide variety of disease pathologies. Current approaches have focused largely on the delivery of proteins to promote neovascularization of ischemic tissues, most notably VEGF and FGF. Although great progress has been made in this area, results from clinical trials are disappointing and safer and more effective approaches are required. To this end, biological agents used for therapeutic neovascularization must be explored beyond the current well-investigated classes. This review focuses on potential pathways for novel drug discovery, utilizing small molecule approaches to induce and enhance neovascularization. Specifically, four classes of new and existing molecules are discussed, including transcriptional activators, receptor selective agonists and antagonists, natural product-derived small molecules, and novel synthetic small molecules.

Venous and arterial endothelial proteomics: mining for markers and mechanisms of endothelial diversity

Endothelial cells (ECs) line the inside of arterial and venous blood vessels in a continuous monolayer and have the important function of responding to environmental cues to regulate vascular tone and new blood vessel formation. They also have well-defined roles in supporting tumorigenesis, and alterations in their function lead to cardiovascular disease. Consequently, ECs have been studied extensively as a cellular model of both normal and abnormal physiology. Despite their importance and the increased utility of proteomic tools in medical research, there are relatively few publications on the topic of vascular endothelial proteomics. A thorough search of the literature mined 52 publications focused exclusively on arterial and/or venous endothelial proteomics. These studies mostly relied upon examination of whole-cell lysates from cultured human umbilical vein ECs to investigate in vitro effects of various molecules, such as VEGF in the context of altering human umbilical vein EC functions related to angiogenesis. Only a few of these publications focused solely on a proteomic characterization of ECs and our analysis further revealed a lack of published studies incorporating proteomic analysis of freshly isolated ECs from tissues or in vitro conditions that mimic in vivo variables, such as oxygen tension and shear stress. It is the purpose of this article to account for the diversity of vascular EC proteomic investigations and comment on the issues that have been and should be addressed in future work.

Alterations in the red blood cell membrane proteome in alzheimer's subjects reflect disease-related changes and provide insight into altered cell morphology

Background

Our earlier studies have shown that red blood cell (RBC) morphology in Alzheimer's disease (AD) subjects was altered (> 15% of the RBCs were elongated as compared to 5.9% in normal controls (p < 0.0001)). These results suggested alterations in the RBC membrane architecture in AD subjects, possibly due to RBC-β-amyloid interactions and/or changes in the expression of membrane proteins. We hypothesized that the observed changes could be due to changes in the level of the protein components of the cytoskeleton and those linked to the RBC membrane. To examine this, we performed a proteomic analysis of RBC membrane proteins of AD subjects, and their age-matched controls using one pool of samples from each group, following their separation by SDS-PAGE, in-gel Tryptic digestion, LC-MS-MS of peptides generated, and a label-free approach of semi-quantitative analysis of their relative MS spectral intensities.

Results

The data suggest, (1) RBC shape/morphology changes in AD subjects are possibly attributed primarily to the changes (elevation or decrease) in the level of a series of membrane/cytoskeleton proteins involved in regulating the stability and elasticity of the RBC membrane, and (2) changes (elevation or decrease) in the level of a second series of proteins in the RBC membrane proteome reflect similar changes reported earlier by various investigators in AD or animal model of AD. Of particular interest, elevation of oxidative stress response proteins such as heat shock 90 kDa protein 1 alpha in AD subjects has been confirmed by western blot analysis in the RBC membrane proteome.

Conclusions

The results suggest that this study provides a potential link between the alterations in RBC membrane proteome in AD subjects and AD pathology.

Statistical model to analyze quantitative proteomics data obtained by 18O/16O labeling and linear ion trap mass spectrometry: application to the study of vascular endothelial growth factor-induced angiogenesis in endothelial cells

Statistical models for the analysis of protein expression changes by stable isotope labeling are still poorly developed, particularly for data obtained by 16O/18O labeling. Besides large scale test experiments to validate the null hypothesis are lacking. Although the study of mechanisms underlying biological actions promoted by vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) on endothelial cells is of considerable interest, quantitative proteomics studies on this subject are scarce and have been performed after exposing cells to the factor for long periods of time. In this work we present the largest quantitative proteomics study to date on the short term effects of VEGF on human umbilical vein endothelial cells by 18O/16O labeling. Current statistical models based on normality and variance homogeneity were found unsuitable to describe the null hypothesis in a large scale test experiment performed on these cells, producing false expression changes. A random effects model was developed including four different sources of variance at the spectrum-fitting, scan, peptide, and protein levels. With the new model the number of outliers at scan and peptide levels was negligible in three large scale experiments, and only one false protein expression change was observed in the test experiment among more than 1000 proteins. The new model allowed the detection of significant protein expression changes upon VEGF stimulation for 4 and 8 h. The consistency of the changes observed at 4 h was confirmed by a replica at a smaller scale and further validated by Western blot analysis of some proteins. Most of the observed changes have not been described previously and are consistent with a pattern of protein expression that dynamically changes over time following the evolution of the angiogenic response. With this statistical model the 18O labeling approach emerges as a very promising and robust alternative to perform quantitative proteomics studies at a depth of several thousand proteins.

Identification of the surface-accessible, lineage-specific vascular proteome by two-dimensional peptide mapping

The formation of blood vessels (angiogenesis) and of lymphatic vessels (lymphangiogenesis) actively contributes to cancer progression and inflammation. Thus, there has been a quest for identifying the molecular mechanisms that control lymphatic and blood vessel formation and function. Membrane and extracellular matrix proteins can serve as suitable targets for imaging and/or therapeutic targeting; however, conventional proteomic technologies often fail to identify them systematically due to insolubility in water and low abundance of membrane proteins. To circumvent this problem, we applied a gel-free proteomics methodology termed two-dimensional peptide mapping (2D-PM) to cultured blood vascular (BECs) and lymphatic (LECs) endothelial cells. 2D-PM comprises biotinylation of surface-accessible proteins, their selective enrichment, separation by HPLC, and analysis by mass spectrometry. We identified 184 proteins that were specifically or predominantly expressed by LECs and 185 proteins specifically expressed by BECs, whereas 377 additional proteins were equally detected in both cell types. For representative proteins, the differential, lineage-specific expression was confirmed by Western analyses of cultured cells and by differential immunofluorescence analyses of tissue samples. Our results identify the surface-accessible, vascular lineage-specific proteome, and they also reveal 2D-PM as a powerful technology for the large-scale screening of lineage-specific protein expression.

Identification of Sokotrasterol Sulfate As a Novel Proangiogenic Steroid

The potential to promote neovascularization in ischemic tissues using exogenous agents has become an exciting area of therapeutics. In an attempt to identify novel small molecules with angiogenesis promoting activity, we screened a library of natural products and identified a sulfated steroid, sokotrasterol sulfate, that induces angiogenesis in vitro and in vivo. We show that sokotrasterol sulfate promotes endothelial sprouting in vitro, new blood vessel formation on the chick chorioallantoic membrane, and accelerates angiogenesis and reperfusion in a mouse hindlimb ischemia model. We demonstrate that sulfation of the steroid is critical for promoting angiogenesis, as the desulfated steroid exhibited no endothelial sprouting activity. We thus developed a chemically synthesized sokotrasterol sulfate analog, 2beta,3alpha,6alpha-cholestanetrisulfate, that demonstrated equivalent activity in the hindlimb ischemia model and resulted in the generation of stable vessels that persisted following cessation of therapy. The function of sokotrasterol sulfate was dependent on cyclooxygenase-2 activity and vascular endothelial growth factor induction, as inhibition of either cyclooxygenase-2 or vascular endothelial growth factor blocked angiogenesis. Surface expression of alpha(v)beta(3) integrin was also necessary for function, as neutralization of alpha(v)beta(3) integrin, but not beta(1) integrin, binding abrogated endothelial sprouting and antiapoptotic activity in response to sokotrasterol sulfate. Our findings indicate that sokotrasterol sulfate and its analogs can promote angiogenesis in vitro and in vivo and could potentially be used for promoting neovascularization to relieve the sequelae of vasoocclusive diseases.