Phosphorylated proteomics analysis of human coronary artery endothelial cells stimulated by Kawasaki disease patients serum

Global Proteomics for Identifying the Alteration Pathway of Niemann-Pick Disease Type C Using Hepatic Cell Models

Niemann-Pick disease type C (NPC) is an autosomal recessive disorder with progressive neurodegeneration. Although the causative genes were previously identified, NPC has unclear pathophysiological aspects, and patients with NPC present various symptoms and onset ages. However, various novel biomarkers and metabolic alterations have been investigated; at present, few comprehensive proteomic alterations have been reported in relation to NPC. In this study, we aimed to elucidate proteomic alterations in NPC and perform a global proteomics analysis for NPC model cells. First, we developed two NPC cell models by knocking out NPC1 using CRISPR/Cas9 (KO1 and KO2). Second, we performed a label-free (LF) global proteomics analysis. Using the LF approach, more than 300 proteins, defined as differentially expressed proteins (DEPs), changed in the KO1 and/or KO2 cells, while the two models shared 35 DEPs. As a bioinformatics analysis, the construction of a protein-protein interaction (PPI) network and an enrichment analysis showed that common characteristic pathways such as ferroptosis and mitophagy were identified in the two model cells. There are few reports of the involvement of NPC in ferroptosis, and this study presents ferroptosis as an altered pathway in NPC. On the other hand, many other pathways and DEPs were previously suggested to be associated with NPC, supporting the link between the proteome analyzed here and NPC. Therapeutic research based on these results is expected in the future.

Utilizing Network Pharmacology to Explore the Possible Mechanism of Coptidis Rhizoma in Kawasaki Disease

Background: The purpose of the research is to identify the main active ingredients in Coptidis Rhizoma (CR) and explore the possible molecular mechanisms in the treatment of Kawasaki disease (KD). Materials and Methods: A total of 58 children with KD were randomly divided into a control group and a Berberine treatment group. The therapeutic indicators of the two groups before and after treatment were compared. Then, compounds and drug targets of CR from the TCMSP, SWISS, SEA, and the STITCH were collected, and targeted KD genes were retrieved from the DisGeNET, DrugBank, and GeneCards databases. The network pharmacology approach involved network construction, target prediction, and module analysis. GO and KEGG enrichment analysis were performed to investigate the possible pathways related to CR for KD treatments. Finally, protein expression was determined to verify the core targets using Western blotting in the cell experiment. Results: In total, nine compounds, 369 relative drug targets, and 624 KD target genes were collected in the above database. The network analysis revealed that 41 targets might be the therapeutic targets of CR on KD. GO and KEGG enrichment analysis revealed that the biological processes, namely, response to hormone, response to inorganic substance, and enzyme-linked receptor protein signaling pathway, and Pathways in cancer, Toll-like receptor signaling pathway, and Pancreatic cancer are the most significant. Protein expression of CASP3, PTGS2, and SRC was upregulated and AKT1 and ERK were downregulated. Conclusion: We provided useful resources to understand the molecular mechanism and the potential targets for novel therapy of KD.

Perspective of Immunopathogenesis and Immunotherapies for Kawasaki Disease

Kawasaki Disease (KD) is an acute inflammatory illness that mostly occurs in children below 5 years of age, with intractable fever, mucocutaneous lesions, lymphadenopathy, and lesions of the coronary artery (CAL). KD is sharing clinical symptoms with systemic inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) which is related to COVID-19. Certain genes are identified to be associated with KD, but the findings usually differ between countries and races. Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) allele types and toll-like receptor (TLR) expression are also correlated to KD. The acute hyperinflammation in KD is mediated by an imbalance between augmented T helper 17 (Th17)/Th1 responses with high levels of interleukin (IL)-6, IL-10, IL-17A, IFN-γ, and IP-10, in contrast to reduced Th2/Treg responses with lower IL-4, IL-5, FoxP3, and TGF-β expression. KD has varying phenotypic variations regarding age, gender, intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) resistance, macrophage activation and shock syndrome. The signs of macrophage activation syndrome (MAS) can be interpreted as hyperferritinemia and thrombocytopenia contradictory to thrombocytosis in typical KD; the signs of KD with shock syndrome (KDSS) can be interpreted as overproduction of nitric oxide (NO) and coagulopathy. For over five decades, IVIG and aspirin are the standard treatment for KD. However, some KD patients are refractory to IVIG required additional medications against inflammation. Further studies are proposed to delineate the immunopathogenesis of IVIG-resistance and KDSS, to identify high risk patients with genetic susceptibility, and to develop an ideal treatment regimen, such as by providing idiotypic immunoglobulins to curb cytokine storms, NO overproduction, and the epigenetic induction of Treg function.

Plasma Proteome Profiling of Coronary Artery Disease Patients: Downregulation of Transthyretin-An Important Event

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a prevalent chronic inflammatory cardiac disorder. An early diagnosis is likely to help in the prevention and proper management of this disease. As the study of proteomics provides the potential markers for detection of a disease, in the present investigation, attempt has been made to identify disease-associated differential proteins involved in CAD pathogenesis. For this study, a total of 200 selected CAD patients were considered, who were recruited for percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) treatment. The proteomic analysis was performed using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE) and MALDI-TOF MS/MS. Samples were also subjected to Western blot analysis, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), peripheral blood mononuclear cells isolation immunofluorescence (IF) analysis, analytical screening by fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS), and in silico analysis. The representative data were shown as mean ± SD of at least three experiments. A total of 19 proteins were identified. Among them, the most abundant five proteins (serotransferrin, talin-1, alpha-2HS glycoprotein, transthyretin (TTR), fibrinogen-α chain) were found to have altered level in CAD. Serotransferrin, talin-1, alpha-2HS glycoprotein, and transthyretin (TTR) were found to have lower level, whereas fibrinogen-α chain was found to have higher level in CAD plasma compared to healthy, confirmed by Western blot analysis. TTR, an important acute phase transport protein, was validated low level in 200 CAD patients who confirmed to undergo PCI treatment. Further, in silico and in vitro studies of TTR indicated a downexpression of CAD in plasma as compared to the plasma of healthy individuals. Lower level of plasma TTR was determined to be an important risk marker in the atherosclerotic-approved CAD patients. We suggest that the TTR lower level predicts disease severity and hence may serve as an important marker tool for CAD screening. However, further large-scale studies are required to determine the clinical significance of TTR.

[Quantitative proteomics and bioinformatics analyses of human coronary artery endothelial cell injury induced by Kawasaki disease]

OBJECTIVE

To study the biomarkers for human coronary artery endothelial cell (HCAEC) injury induced by Kawasaki disease (KD) using isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation (iTRAQ) proteomics.

METHODS

HCAECs cultured with the serum of children with KD were used as the KD group, and those cultured with the serum of healthy children was used as the healthy control group. The iTRAQ technique was used to measure the expression of proteins in two groups. The data on proteins were analyzed by bioinformatics. Western blot was used for the validation of protein markers.

RESULTS

A total of 518 significantly differentially expressed proteins were identified (with an absolute value of difference fold of >1.2, P<0.05). The gene ontology analysis showed that the differentially expressed proteins were significantly enriched in biological processes (including cellular processes, metabolic processes, and biological regulation), cellular components (including cell parts, cells, and organelles), and molecular functions (including binding, catalytic activity, and molecular function regulators). The KEGG analysis showed that the proteins were significantly enriched in the signaling pathways of ribosomes, PI3K-Akt signaling pathway, and transcriptional dysregulation in cancer. The PPI network showed that the top 9 protein markers in relation density were PWP2, MCM4, MCM7, MCM5, MCM3, MCM2, SLD5, HDAC2, and MCM6, which were selected as the protein markers for coronary endothelial injury in KD. Western blot showed that the KD group had significantly lower expression levels of the protein markers HDAC2, PWP2, and MCM2 than the healthy control group (P<0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

The serum of children with KD significantly changes the protein expression pattern of HCAECs and affects the signaling pathways associated with the cardiovascular system, which provides a new basis for the pathophysiological mechanism and therapeutic targets of KD.

Proteomic landscape of human coronary artery atherosclerosis

In order to investigate novel biomarkers for the detection of coronary artery disease for effective therapeutic targets, a comprehensive understanding of the protein networks and protein expression abundance in coronary artery samples is required. This was established by means of liquid chromatography (LC)-mass spectrometry (MS)/MS analysis in the present study. A total of 20 human coronary artery specimens from 2 autopsied adults were employed in the present study. The natural history and histological classification of the atherosclerotic lesions of the coronary artery samples were analyzed by hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining, and the human coronary arterial proteome and proteomics features were characterized by MS analysis. The present study identified 2,135 proteins in the 20 coronary artery segments samples from the 2 cases. Combined with the results of H&E staining of the coronary artery samples, a total of 174 proteins, including 4 upregulated proteins and 164 downregulated proteins (excluding 6 proteins with inconsistent expression tendencies), were shown to be associated with coronary artery disease. In addition, Gene Ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes enrichment of the differentially expressed proteins revealed that the mitochondrial energy metabolism may be responsible for the occurrence and development of coronary artery atherosclerosis. The human coronary arterial proteome can be considered as a complex network whose architectural characteristics vary considerably as a function of the presence or absence, and histological classification of coronary artery atherosclerosis. These data thus suggest that the prevention of mitochondrial dysfunction via the retrieval of the mitochondrial associated proteins expression may be a promising target in coronary artery disease.