Advances in human brain proteomics analysis of neurodegenerative diseases

Abstract

Neurodegenerative diseases are characterized by progressive loss of neurons manifested as motor dysfunction and/or cognitive decline. Aberrant protein aggregation with altered physicochemical properties occurs in most neurodegenerative diseases. The pathophysiological mechanisms leading to the onset and progress of neurodegenerative diseases are still not fully understood. On the one hand, limited studies investigate neurodegenerative disease from human brain tissues. On the other, a comprehensive and efficient analysis method is needed to detect the signaling pathways evolved in neurodegenerative disease. Proteomics on human brains identifies key diagnostic biomarkers and treatment/therapeutic targets of neurodegenerative disorders. In recent years, several proteomics studies conducted on brain tissues from patients with neurodegenerative diseases have shown that changes in protein abundance or post-translational modification underly the disease pathogenesis. In this review, we summarize the major advances of human brain proteomics in the research on Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and Huntington’s disease as the most common neurodegenerative diseases. Finally, we proposed some perspective clues for future work.

Application of proteomics in brain's aging research

“…Proteomics provides potent access for large-scale analysis of proteins and gives us an overall insight into the proteomic changes in biological processes or disease initiation and development (Vinaiphat & Sze, 2022;Raffe et al, 2020;Jayathirtha et al, 2023). A large scale of research has proved the suitability of proteomics for investigating proteins in brain tissues either in qualitative or quantitative ways when combined with bioinformatics (Chen et al, 2022, Dai et al, 2022Rozanova et al, 2023;Park et al, 2023), Plentiful hints would be presented to us by proteomics. Thus, proteomics contributes to our understanding of the sophisticated biological process regulation that occurs in the brain in an unbiased manner.…”

Highlights in the Inaugural Issue of Human Brain

“…One of this journal's key critical research areas is investigating the pathogenesis of human brain disorders, especially neurodegenerative diseases. Chen et al (2022) summarize the advances of human brain proteomics in researching the most common neurodegenerative diseases. Notably, this review shows that the advances in human Liu et al (2022) brain proteomics offer a new vision to identify and develop novel mechanisms, biomarkers, and therapeutic targets for neurodegenerative diseases.…”