Proteomic typing of amyloid deposits in systemic amyloidoses

Abstract

Amyloidoses are characterized by the presence of extracellular amyloid deposits, constituted by fibrillar aggregates of misfolded proteins. Despite the similar morphologic appearance of fibrils, at least 28 different proteins have been detected as causative agents of human amyloidoses, 14 of which associated with systemic forms. Unequivocal typing of the amyloid deposits is a key step in the management of these diseases. Existing drawbacks of traditional, immunohistochemistry-based techniques have driven the search for alternative solutions for direct amyloid typing. Proteomics indicates the comprehensive study of the proteins in a biological sample, centered on analysis by mass spectrometry. The great potential of this approach in describing the composition of amyloid deposits and in studying the molecular features of the amyloidogenic precursors has become immediately clear and the introduction of proteomics in the clinical practice has revolutionized the field of amyloid typing. This review provides a critical overview of the various approaches that have been proposed in this specific context, along with a brief description of the proteomic methods for assessment of the circulating amyloidogenic proteins.

Keywords::

• Proteomics
• amyloid typing
• mass spectrometry

Acknowledgments

We thank Prof. Giampaolo Merlini for helpful suggestions.

Declaration of interest: The authors declare no competing financial interests. F.L.’s work is supported by Fondazione CARIPLO NOBEL project, Proteomic platform; EURAMY project (Community’s Sixth Framework Program); Fondazione Cariplo (N2009-2532); Ricerca Finalizzata Malattie Rare, Italian Ministry of Health, Istituto Superiore di Sanità (526D/63); Ministry of Research and University (2007AESFX2_003), and grant N. 9965 from the Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro Special Program Molecular Clinical Oncology.