Publications

HuProt Autoantibodies: Autoantibodies against tumor-associated antigens (TAAbs) can be used as potential biomarkers in the detection of cancer. Our study aims to identify novel TAAbs for gastric cancer (GC) based on human proteomic chips and construct a diagnostic model to distinguish GC from healthy controls (HCs) based on serum TAAbs. The human proteomic chips were used to screen the candidate TAAbs. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was used to verify and validate the titer of the candidate TAAbs in the verification cohort (80 GC cases and 80 HCs) and validation cohort (192 GC cases, 128 benign gastric disease cases, and 192 HCs), respectively.

• Link: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/oncology/articles/10.3389/fonc.2021.637871/full

Most ovarian cancers are infiltrated by prognostically relevant activated T cells, yet exhibit low response rates to immune checkpoint inhibitors. Memory B cell and plasma cell infiltrates have previously been associated with better outcomes in ovarian cancer, but the nature and functional relevance of these responses are controversial. Here, using 3 independent cohorts that in total comprise 534 patients with high-grade serous ovarian cancer, we show that robust, protective humoral responses are dominated by the production of polyclonal IgA, which binds to polymeric IgA receptors that are universally expressed on ovarian cancer cells.

• Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03144-0

The development of prophylactic and therapeutic agents for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a current global health priority. Here, we investigated the presence of cross-neutralizing antibodies against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in dromedary camels that were Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) seropositive but MERS-CoV free. The tested 229 dromedaries had anti–MERS-CoV camel antibodies with variable cross-reactivity patterns against SARS-CoV-2 proteins, including the S trimer and M, N, and E proteins. Using SARS-CoV-2 competitive immunofluorescence immunoassays and pseudovirus neutralization assays, we found medium-to-high titers of cross-neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in these animals.

• Link: https://insight.jci.org/articles/view/145785

HuProt PPI: The Zika virus (ZIKV) and dengue virus (DENV) flaviviruses exhibit similar replicative processes but have distinct clinical outcomes. A systematic understanding of virus–host protein–protein interaction networks can reveal cellular pathways critical to viral replication and disease pathogenesis. Here we employed three independent systems biology approaches toward this goal. First, protein array analysis of direct interactions between individual ZIKV/DENV viral proteins and 20,240 human proteins revealed multiple conserved cellular pathways and protein complexes, including proteasome complexes.

• Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1672022921000255?via%3Dihub

Autoimmune diseases are frequently associated with autoantibodies. Recently, large sets of autoantibody-targeted antigens (“autoantigen-omes”) of patient and control sera have been revealed, enabling autoantigen-omic approaches. However, statistical standards for defining such autoantigen-omes are lacking. The z-score indicates how many standard deviations an antigen reactivity of a given sample is from the mean reactivity of the corresponding antigen in a reference group. Hence, it is a common measure to define significantly positive reactivity in autoantigen profiling approaches.

• Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1871678420301758?via%3Dihub

HuProt Small Molecule: Reverse cholesterol transport, removing excess cholesterol from peripheral tissues, is an important therapeutic target for atherosclerosis treatment. In this study, we propose a new small molecule, E17241, that may be used to treat atherosclerosis by promoting reverse cholesterol transport via ABCA1 (ATP-binding cassette transporter A1) upregulation.

• Link: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/ATVBAHA.120.314156

HuProt PPI: Overproduction of human light chains (LCs) and immunoglobulins can result in various forms of renal disease such as cast nephropathy, monoclonal immunoglobulin deposition disease, LC proximal tubulopathy, AL amyloidosis, and crystal storing histiocytosis. This is caused by cellular uptake of LCs and overwhelmed intracellular transport and degradation in patients with high urine LC concentrations. LC kappa and lambda purification was evaluated by sodium dodecyl sulfate gel electrophoresis. LC and myeloma protein binding to immobilized renal proteins was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).

• Link: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2020.609582/full

HuProt Autoantibodies: To identify novel autoantibodies of Takayasu arteritis (TAK) using HuProt array-based approach, a two-phase approach was adopted. In Phase I, serum samples collected from 40 TAK patients, 15 autoimmune disease patients, and 20 healthy subjects were screened to identify TAK-specific autoantibodies using human protein (HuProt) arrays. In phase II, the identified candidate autoantibodies were validated with TAK-focused arrays using an additional cohort comprised of 109 TAK patients, 110 autoimmune disease patients, and 96 healthy subjects.

• Link: https://www.mcponline.org/article/S1535-9476(20)35150-1/fulltext

SAPHO (synovitis, acne, pustulosis, hyperostosis, and osteitis) syndrome shows a wide variability in musculoskeletal and cutaneous manifestations, and it is therefore underrecognized and misdiagnosed in the clinic due to a lack of specific markers. In this study, we aimed to identify specific biomarkers by screening serum autoantibodies in SAPHO patients with a 17K human whole-proteome microarray.

• Link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10875-020-00937-w

HuProt Enzyme: Signal transduction is driven by protein interactions that are controlled by posttranslational modifications (PTM). Usually, protein domains are responsible for “reading” the PTM signal deposited on the interacting partners. Protein domain microarrays have been developed as a high throughput platform to facilitate the rapid identification of protein-protein interactions, and this approach has become broadly used in biomedical research.

• Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1046202319301379?via%3Dihub