No abstract

Membranous nephropathy (MN) is the main cause of adult nephrotic syndrome (NS). The pathogenesis of MN is complex and involves subepithelial immune complex deposition. Approximately one-third of patients with MN develop end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Timely diagnosis and reasonable intervention are the keys to improving prognosis. In recent years, with the development of high-throughput technologies, such as mass spectrometry (MS), microarray, and sequencing technologies, the discovery of biomarkers for MN has become an important area of research. In this review, we summarize the significant progress in biomarker identification. For example, a variety of podocyte target antigens and their autoantibodies have been reported. Phospholipase A2 receptor (PLA2R) is the most well-established target antigen in MN. PLA2R and its autoantibodies have clinical significance, with both diagnostic and therapeutic value for MN. In addition, a variety of new biomarkers, including proteins, metabolites, noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs), and immune cells, have recently been found. These MN-related biomarkers have great significance in the diagnosis, progression, prognosis, and treatment response of MN.

No abstract

Glomerular diseases, which are currently diagnosed using an invasive renal biopsy, encompass numerous disease subtypes that often display similar clinical manifestations even though they have different therapeutic regimes. Therefore, a noninvasive assay is needed to classify and guide the treatment of glomerular diseases. Here, we develop and apply a high-throughput and quantitative microarray platform to characterize the immunoglobulin proteome in the serum from 419 healthy and diseased patients. The immunoglobulin proteome−clinical variable correlation network revealed novel pathological mechanisms of glomerular diseases. Furthermore, an immunoglobulin proteome-multivariate normal distribution (IP-MiND) mathematical model based on the correlation network classified healthy volunteers and patients with idiopathic membranous nephropathy with an average recall of 48% (23−80%) in the discovery cohort and 64% (63−65%) in an independent validation cohort. Our results demonstrate the translational utility of our microarray platform to glomerular diseases as well as its clinical potential in characterizing other human diseases.