Design of recombinant antibody microarrays for urinary proteomics

Urinary proteomics has become a key discipline within clinical proteomics for noninvasive diagnosis and monitoring of disease, and biomarker discovery. In order to decipher complex proteomes, high demands will, however, be placed upon the methodology applied. The purpose of this study was to develop a recombinant antibody microarray platform for urinary proteomics.

We adopted our previously in-house developed recombinant antibody microarray set-up and redesigned the platform for urinary proteomics. In this process, the key antibody array assay parameters, such as sample handling, sample labeling protocol, and assay conditions, etc, reflecting the unique properties of urine as sample format, were addressed and reoptimized in a step-by-step procedure.

In this proof-of-concept study, we have designed the first generation of a recombinant antibody microarray technology platform for urinary proteomics. The results showed that multiplexed, sensitive (pg/mL range), and reproducible urine protein expression profiling could be performed targeting directly labeled, nonfractionated urine.

We have demonstrated that crude, directly labeled urine samples could be profiled in a rapid, reproducible, sensitive, and multiplexed manner after minimal sample prehandling. These findings could potentially pave the way for enhanced urinary proteomics and understanding of renal physiology with implications in both health and disease.