Poster Presentation HUPO 2019 - 18th Human Proteome Organization World Congress

In-depth serum proteomics reveals biomarkers of psoriasis severity and response to traditional Chinese medicine (#947)

Meng Xu 1 , Jingwen Deng 2 , Kaikun Xu 3 , Tiansheng Zhu 4 , Ling Han 2 , Yuhong Yan 2 , Danni Yao 2 , Hao Deng 2 , Dan Wang 3 , Yaoting Sun 4 , Cheng Chang 3 , Xiaomei Zhang 3 , Jiayu Dai 3 , Liang Yue 4 , Qiushi Zhang 4 , Xue Cai 4 , Yi Zhu 4 , Hu Duan 3 , Yuan Liu 3 , Dong Li 3 , Yunping Zhu 3 , Timothy R.D.J. Radstake 5 , Deepak M.W. Balak 6 , Danke Xu 1 , Tiannan Guo 4 , Chuanjian Lu 2 , Xiaobo Yu 3
  1. State Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Life Science, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
  2. Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine, Guangdong Provincial Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Clinical Research on Traditional Chinese Medicine Syndrome, Guangzhou, China
  3. State Key Laboratory of Proteomics, Beijing Proteome Research Center, National Center for Protein Sciences, Beijing Institute of Lifeomics, Changping District,, BEIJING, China
  4. School of Life Sciences, Westlake University; Institute for Basic Medical Sciences, Westlake Institute for Advanced Study, Hangzhou, China
  5. Department of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
  6. Department of Dermatology and Allergology, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Background: Serum and plasma contain abundant biological information that reflect the body’s physiological and pathological conditions and is therefore a valuable sample type for disease biomarkers. However, comprehensive profiling of the serological proteome is challenging due to the wide range of protein concentrations in serum.

Methodology: To address this challenge, we developed a novel in-depth serum proteomics platform capable of analyzing the serum proteome across ~10 orders or magnitude by combining data obtained from Data Independent Acquisition Mass Spectrometry (DIA-MS) and customizable antibody microarrays.

Results: Using psoriasis as a proof-of-concept disease model, we screened 50 serum proteomes from healthy controls and psoriasis patients before and after treatment with traditional Chinese medicine (YinXieLing) on our in-depth serum proteomics platform. We identified 106 differentially-expressed proteins in psoriasis patients involved in psoriasis-relevant biological processes, such as blood coagulation, inflammation, apoptosis and angiogenesis signaling pathways. In addition, unbiased clustering and principle component analysis revealed 58 proteins discriminating healthy volunteers from psoriasis patients and 12 proteins distinguishing responders from non-responders to YinXieLing. To further demonstrate the clinical utility of our platform, we performed correlation analyses between serum proteomes and psoriasis activity and found a positive association between the psoriasis area and severity index (PASI) score with three serum proteins (PI3, CCL22, IL-12B).

Conclusion: Taken together, these results demonstrate the clinical utility of our in-depth serum proteomics platform to identify specific diagnostic and predictive biomarkers of psoriasis and other immune-mediated diseases.