Change in the expression of body fluid proteins is caused by many diseases or environmental disturbances. The changes in tear proteins are also associated with various pathological eye conditions. Especially, chronic blepharitis is one of the most common conditions seen in the ophthalmologist's office. However, there are no specific clinical diagnostic tests for blepharitis, and it is difficult to treat effectively. Therefore, the aim of this study was to screen prognostic or diagnostic marker tear proteins for blepharitis and investigate pathogenesis of this disease using proteomics techniques. The tear proteins expressed in patients suffering from blepharitis (patient, n=19) and healthy volunteers (control, n=27) were analyzed using the two-dimensional electrophoresis (2-DE) technique. The differentially expressed proteins in patients were identified with ESI-Q-TOF (electrospray-quadrupole-time-of-flight) mass spectrometry and confirmed with western blotting. Nine proteins in patient were down regulated about 50% compared to those of the control: serum albumin precursor, alpha-1 antitrypsin, lacritin precursor, lysozyme, Ig-kappa chain VIII, prolactin inducible protein (PIP/GCDFP-15), cystatin-SA III, pyruvate kinase, and an unnamed protein. The use of the two-dimensional eletrophoretic technique could give more insight into the disease-related protein expression changes in tear fluids. Our findings reveal that the composition of tear proteins in blepharitis patients is different from that of healthy subjects and may provide further insights into the pathogenesis of blepharitis.

Recent studies have suggested the existence of a small subset of cancer cells called cancer stem cells (CSCs), which possess the ability to initiate malignancies, promote tumor formation, drive metastasis, and evade conventional chemotherapies. Elucidation of the specific signaling pathway and mechanism underlying the action of CSCs might improve the efficacy of cancer treatments. In this study, we analyzed differentially expressed proteins between tumerigenic and nontumorigenic cells isolated from the human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cell line, Huh7, via proteomic analysis to identify proteins correlated with specific features of CSCs. The expression level of Transgelin was 25-fold higher in tumorigenic cells than nontumorigenic cells. Similar results were also observed in tumorigenic cells derived from colorectal adenocarcinoma and prostate carcinoma. More importantly, the elevated levels of Transgelin significantly increased the invasiveness of tumorigenic cells, whereas reduced levels decreased the invasive potential. Moreover, in tumors derived from Huh7-induced xenografts, Transgelin was also co-expressed with CXCR4, which is responsible for tumor invasion. Taken together, these results indicate that the metastatic potential of CSCs arises from highly expressed Transgelin.

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