Profiling Plasma Peptides for the Identification of Potential Ageing Biomarkers in Chinese Han Adults

Abstract

Advancing age is associated with cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus and cancer, and shows significant inter-individual variability. To identify ageing-related biomarkers we performed a proteomic analysis on 1890 Chinese Han individuals, 1136 males and 754 females, aged 18 to 82 years, using weak cation exchange magnetic bead based MALDI-TOF-MS analysis. The study identified 44 peptides which varied in concentration in different age groups. In particular, apolipoprotein A-I (ApoA1) concentration gradually increased between 18 to 50 years of age, the levels of fibrinogen alpha (FGA) decreased over the same age span, while albumin (ALB) was significantly degraded in middle-aged individuals. In addition, the plasma peptide profiles of FGA and four other unidentified proteins were found to be gender-dependent. Plasma proteins such as FGA, ALB and ApoA1 are significantly correlated with age in the Chinese Han population and could be employed as indicative ageing-related biomarkers.

Serum peptidome profiling for the diagnosis of colorectal cancer: discovery and validation in two independent cohorts

“…A sample of 5 μl solution was injected on the column. The mobile phase A, mobile phase B, flow rate and gradient elution were operated according to the published methods [ 16 ]. The obtained samples were further analysed using the MS/MS instrument.…”

“…It contains several physiologically important peptides, such as peptide hormones, peptide metabolic products and proteolytic fragments of larger precursor proteins [ 15 ]. The proteolytic degradative patterns in the serum peptidome, often refer to as peptidome signature or fingerprint, hold important information about many physiological and pathological processes, such as aging [ 16 ], type 2 diabetes [ 17 ] and Alzheimer's disease [ 18 ]. The progress of tumor's malignancy is accompanied by alterations in exoproteases activities, affecting the constitution of endogenous peptides that can indicate the presence/absence of cancer [ 19 ].…”

Serum peptidome patterns of hepatocellular carcinoma based on magnetic bead separation and mass spectrometry analysis

“…It is also well recognized that biomarkers which may play important roles in physiologic and pathologic processes are important for diagnosis, prognosis, and prediction of HCC. Human serum contains LMW protein/peptides, which could be used as biomarker candidates,such as fibrinogen α-chain fibrinogen alpha, albumin and apolipoprotein A1 [27,28]. …”

“…MS is one of the most important techniques in proteomic analysis. MALDI-TOF MS is widely used in proteomics biomarker research due to its high sensitivity and high quality in analysis of peptides, proteins and large organic molecules [27-29]. …”

Disease Profiling by MALDI MS Analysis of Biofluids

“…This protocol and a slight variation of it with regard to the serum peptide extraction step (Tiss et al 2007) have been used for biomarker discovery studies for the early detection of ovarian cancer (Timms et al 2010;Timms et al 2011) and differential diagnosis of biliary tract cancer (Sandanayake et al 2014). Similar protocols have been used by other groups for diagnostic biomarker discovery in a variety of cancers (Villanueva et al 2006b;Villanueva et al 2006c;Pietrowska et al 2009) and other diseases/infections (Conraux et al 2013;Li et al 2012;Terracciano et al 2011;Teunissen et al 2011;Xiao et al 2011), for predictive and prognostic biomarker discovery (Vafadar-Isfahani et al 2010;Taguchi et al 2007), and to identify blood-borne markers of ageing (Lu et al 2012).…”