Proteomic approaches to the analysis of atopic dermatitis and new insights from interactomics

In this review, we summarized the recent findings regarding atopic dermatitis (AD) skin disease based on proteomic studies. AD is a chronic relapsing inflammatory skin disease typically characterized by a distribution of eczematous skin lesions with lichenification, pruritic excoriations and dry skin with wide varieties of pathophysiological aspects. We summarized the alterations of the protein expressions in the primary cultured AD cells from the patients'-biopsy samples that were mostly analyzed by 2-D PAGE and MALDI-TOF. Further, we also conducted protein-protein interaction mapping according to the obtained candidate proteins. As a result, we found that several hub proteins, i.e. heat shock 70-kDa protein 2, heat shock 70-kDa protein 9, tumor rejection antigen-1 (gp96), spermatogenesis-associated factor, protein kinase C inhibitor 1, vimentin, tenascin, semaphorin 4f (SEMA4F), complement component C1r deficiency (C1R) and apolipoprotein A (LPA), respectively, could receive important consideration in future studies. Since the mechanism of AD disease has been shown to be complex, our results may provide new clues to aid understanding of AD.