gms | German Medical Science

Retinal Vein Occlusion (RVO) is the second most common retinal vascular disease after diabetic retinopathy. Nevertheless, the pathogenesis and repair mechanisms remain partially understood and further research is needed to identify potential future biomarkers and new therapeutic approaches.

In this clinical-experimental study vitreous samples of 48 patients with RVO (=sample group) and 26 patients with idiopathic floaters (=control group) were analyzed. 23-gauge core vitrectomy was performed to gain vitreous samples. After tryptic digestion, CE-ESI-MS analysis was carried out using a time-of-flight mass spectrometer, coupled online to a capillary electrophoresis system. Mosaiques Viso was used to analyze raw CE-ESI-MS data. To sequence peptides ESI-MS/MS analysis was performed. Significant peptides were determined by comparing RVO with control samples. Significant peptides were matched to their corresponding proteins. Gene Ontology-Terms (GO-Terms) were assigned to IPI numbers via WebGestalt (WEB-base Gene SeT AnaLysis Toolkit) using GO Slim Classification.

880 successfully sequenced peptides were detected, relating to 136 proteins. 59 proteins composed of 145 peptides, were expressed significantly different between sample and control group (P=1,6E-9 to 4,9E-2). Of these, 52 could be analysed via WebGestalt. For the category “cellular component” the most frequent GO-Terms were extracellular space (23), membrane (14) and membrane-enclosed lumen (14). Accordingly, protein binding (29), enzyme regulator activity (15) and ion binding (14) were the most frequent GO-Terms for the category “molecular function” and response to stimulus (35), biological regulation (33) and multicellular organismal process (31) for the category “biological process”.

Response to stimulus, biological regulation and multicellular organismal process are the most common GO-Terms when subdividing the detected significant proteins regarding their biological processes. Therefore, proteins assigned to these terms may have an important function in the pathogenesis of RVO and differ in the RVO subgroups.