Background As a chronic inflammatory disease, much of the research related to asthma has focused on proinflammatory mechanisms. T-lymphocyte (T-LC)-derived cytokines have been implicated in asthmatic pathogenesis. Proteomic technology has rapidly developed in the postgenomic era, and it is now widely accepted as a complementary technology to genetic profiling. We investigated the changes of proteins in T-LC of asthmatic patients from the uncontrolled to controlled level by using standard proteome technology: two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2D-PAGE), liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS), and a database search.
Methods The proteins of CD4+ T-LC were isolated from the whole blood of six asthmatic patients with uncontrolled to controlled levels over three months. 2D-PAGE was performed and coomassie blue stained protein spots were comparatively analyzed between the uncontrolled and controlled groups using an image analyzer. Some differentially expressed spots were identified by LC-MS/MS and database search.
Results More than 100 spots were identified in the 2D-PAGE gels from the CD4+ T-LC of the asthmatic patients. The general distribution pattern of the spots in the Coomassie blue-stained gel was similar in both groups, and 13 proteins showed different intensity, suggesting differential expression. Six protein spots in the CD4+ T-LC of the uncontrolled asthmatic patients were increased and 7 spots were decreased compared to those of the controlled subjects.
Conclusions The proteomic examination of the CD4+ T-LC revealed some differentially expressed proteins in the uncontrolled and controlled asthmatic patients. The possibility of using the differentially expressed proteins as important biomarkers and therapeutic targets in uncontrolled asthmatic patients warrants further study.
