The Centre for Clinical Proteomics (CCP) is driven by pre-existing broad expertise in both basic and advanced proteomic research at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and by a tradition for translational research at the Clinical Institute at Odense University Hospital.
Clinical proteomics
Clinical proteomics is an interdisciplinary task, which demands the participation of both basic researchers, translational scientists and clinicians. Improvements in the research field depend on the capacity to cover aspects from development of mass spectrometry methods over cellular and molecular biochemistry to clinical science.
Clinical proteomics is the study of proteins involved in diseases in order to understand disease mechanisms, and be able to detect and monitor specific disorders, hereby improving patient care.
Research within clinical proteomics has been focused at presenting clinicians with tools for proper diagnosis and treatment of diseases by understanding the role of the proteins in both biology and pathology and applying this knowledge for early diagnosis and optimizing disease treatments.
Read more about the research areas of CCP
Expertises
Scientists at SDU are recognized worldwide for research in protein analysis by mass spectrometry. Numerous mass spectrometric-based proteomics strategies have been developed at the university, which are used by researchers all over the world; both concerning basic mass spectrometry analysis of peptides, post-translational protein modifications, as well as development of quantitative proteomics research tools. This basis has already given rise to several collaborations with medical scientist within the field of clinical proteomics.
Systems biology, functional genomics and proteomics are cutting-edge scientific disciplines that find applications in all areas of life sciences, molecular medicine and biotechnology. Proteomics, the systematic analysis of the protein content of cells, tissues and organisms, facilitates detailed understanding of tissue and cellular structure and function, including regulatory networks in both health and disease.
Research
The Centre for Clinical Proteomics is involved in various research areas including cancer, metabolism, arterial diseases, plasma/urine proteomics, and method development. Below is a brief description of each research area.
The primary focus is to develop new and efficient quantitative mass spectrometric and affinity chromatographic strategies for the characterization of posttranslational modifications of proteins from highly complex mixtures and apply these strategies to the study of clinical relevant samples. Furthermore we aim to develop selected reaction monitoring mass spectrometry-based assays to validate and quantify several candidate proteins simultaneusly.
Novel metastasis-associated markers are identified using quantitative proteomic analysis.
One project focuses on identifying novel cell surface proteins that are expressed differently on metastasizing compared to non-metastasizing breast cancer cells. These proteins may influence the ability of breast cancer cells to metastasize and could have utility as therapeutic targets. Proteins are identified by membrane purification, labeling and quantitative mass spectrometry analysis. A large panel of candidate proteins have been identified and the clinical relevance of these cell surface markers is evaluated using large panels of tissue biopsies from breast cancer patients with well-characterized medical histories and follow-up.
In other studies surface markers associated with breast cancer stem cells are identified, as there is a paucity of such markers.
Finally, we are studying posttranslational modifications, such as phosphorylations and glycosylations, to identify altered expression between metastasizing vs. non-metastasizing cells and in breast cancer cells that exhibit resistance to endocrine treatment.
Discovery and targeted characterisation of mitochondrial phosphoproteins are used to stydy the pathogenesis of insulin resistance in skeletal muscle and adipose tissue of patients with type 2 diabetes using mass spectrometry based quantitative phosphoproteomics.
Mass spectrometry based characterisation of skeletal muscle proteome, mitoproteome, phosphoproteome, and phosphotyrosine proteome, and quantitative studies in individuals with insulin resistance.
Our projects are aimed at determining quantitative and qualitative changes in the proteinaceous components of arterial tissue in different disease situations.
We use material from a large biobank, which contains human arterial tissue removed at different operations at the Odense University Hospital. The primary focus is on alterations in the arterial proteome in relation to diabetes, gender, smoking and uremia.
Knowledge about protein changes in the arterial proteome in relation to specific risk factors, will improve our basic understanding of arterial diseases and point out new treatment targets.
Different diseases are associated with specific changes in the plasma or urine proteome. Using a MS-based approach, we are searching to identify such specific alterations in the protein content, to identify new markers for clinical important conditions. Our interest is mainly cardiovascular diseases.