Reversible phosphorylation of proteins represents an important component of cellular signaling pathways. The isolation of phosphoproteins in complex mixtures and the determination of the level of phosphorylation have been and remain a major challenge. It has prompted the development of several strategies, including immobilized metal affinity capture to enrich for phosphorylated peptides. An improved methodology was published (Ficarro, et al., Nature Biotechnology 2002, 20, 301-305) that showed increased selectivity through esterification of amino acid side chain carboxylic groups of enzymatically digested peptides. This method was applied for relative quantitation of phosphopeptides in conjunction with the use of stable isotope labeling. The merits and limits of the approach are discussed and its application to the analysis of the effects of serum starvation on in vitro cultured human lung cells is presented.

Genomic and proteomic analysis of normal and cancer tissues has yielded abundant molecular information for potential biomarker and therapeutic targets. Considering potential advantages in accessibility to pharmacological intervention, identification of targets resident on the vascular endothelium within tumors is particularly attractive. By employing mass spectrometry (MS) as a tool to identify proteins that are over-expressed in tumor-associated endothelium relative to normal cells, we aimed to discover targets that could be utilized in tumor angiogenesis cancer therapy. We developed proteomic methods that allowed us to focus our studies on the discovery of cell surface/secreted proteins, as they represent key antibody therapeutic and biomarker opportunities. First, we isolated endothelial cells (ECs) from human normal and kidney cancer tissues by FACS using CD146 as a marker. Additionally, dispersed human colon and lung cancer tissues and their corresponding normal tissues were cultured ex-vivo and their endothelial content were preferentially expanded, isolated and passaged. Cell surface proteins were then preferentially captured, digested with trypsin and subjected to MS-based proteomic analysis. Peptides were first quantified, and then the sequences of differentially expressed peptides were resolved by MS analysis. A total of 127 unique non-overlapped (157 total) tumor endothelial cell over-expressed proteins identified from directly isolated kidney-associated ECs and those identified from ex-vivo cultured lung and colon tissues including known EC markers such as CD146, CD31, and VWF. The expression analyses of a panel of the identified targets were confirmed by immunohistochemistry (IHC) including CD146, B7H3, Thy-1 and ATP1B3. To determine if the proteins identified mediate any functional role, we performed siRNA studies which led to previously unidentified functional dependency for B7H3 and ATP1B3.

The reproducibility of a given method for relative quantitation governs the reliability of liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) based differential analysis in proteomic studies. Understanding the noise level introduced from biological, chemical, and instrumental sources not only helps to determine the experimental design but also aids in assessing the reliability of expression ratios used for quantitation. Here we present a reproducibility assessment method for relative quantitation based on the intensity ratio distribution of common features in LC-MS replicates. This method applies to both decoupled (label-free quantitation) and coupled (label-dependent quantitation) methods. Aligning the features of LC-MS maps directly for the decoupled method or by matching an LC-MS map and its virtual map for the coupled method results in a list of common features for replicate samples. We find that the ratio distribution of the common features successfully indicates the reproducibility of each experiment prior to MS/MS peptide sequencing in three different quantitation strategies: decoupled, coupled isotope-coded affinity tag, and coupled stable isotope labeling of amino acids in cell culture experiments.

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An optical probe, RG-(gal)28GSA, was synthesized to improve the detection of peritoneal implants by targeting the β-d-galactose receptors highly expressed on the cell surface of a wide variety of cancers arising from the ovary, pancreas, colon, and stomach. Evaluation of RG-(gal)28GSA, RG-(gal)20GSA, glucose-analog RG-(glu)28GSA, and control RG-HSA, demonstrates specificity for the galactose, binding to several human adenocarcinoma cell lines, and cellular internalization. Studies using peritoneally disseminated SHIN3 xenografts in mice also confirmed a preference for galactose with the ability to detect submillimeter size lesions. Preliminary toxicity study for RG-(gal)28GSA using Balb/c mice reveal no toxic effects up to 100x of the standard imaging dose of 1mg/kg administered either intraperitoneally or intravenously. These data indicate that RG-(gal)28GSA can selectively target a variety of human adenocarcinoma, can improve intraoperative or endoscopic tumor detection and resection, and may have little or no toxic in vivo effects; hence, it may be clinically translatable.