editorial mass spectrometry applications in biomedical...

EditorialMass Spectrometry Applications in Biomedical Research

Fa-Yun Che,1 Hai-Teng Deng,2 and Shi-Jian Ding3

1Department of Pathology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY 10461, USA2School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China3Diabetes and Obesity Research Center, Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute at Lake Nona, Orlando, FL 32827, USA

Correspondence should be addressed to Fa-Yun Che; [email protected]

Received 5 April 2015; Accepted 5 April 2015

Copyright © 2015 Fa-Yun Che et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

We are so happy and excited to see our special issuepublished. With the tremendous advances of modern massspectrometry (MS) techniques, MS has become one ofthe essential analytical tools to biological and biomedicalresearch. Mass spectrometry provides rapid and sensitivequalitative and quantitative analysis of biomolecules (pro-teins, peptides, oligosaccharides, lipids, DNA, and RNA),drugs, andmetabolites. In this special issue we have collected12 original research articles and 2 review articles. MS hasbeen successfully applied to high-throughput proteome-wideanalysis of proteins, protein-protein interactions, and proteinposttranslational modifications (PTMs) in cells, tissues, ororgans. L. Jin et al. reported phosphoproteomic analysis ofgossypol-induced apoptosis in ovarian cancer cell line. Intheir work, about 9750 phosphopeptides from 3030 phos-phoproteins were identified. They found gossypol inducedupregulation of LATS1 which phosphorylates YAP1. T. Guoet al., using 2DGE-based Western blotting and MS/MS tech-nique, identified 24 glioblastoma tyrosine-phosphorylatedproteins. R. Xu et al. reported the application of SILAC-basedquantitative proteomic analysis to myeloma cells.They foundgossypol treatment induced ROS production and cell necro-sis. Proteomics showed that gossypol induced changes inexpression levels of 585 proteins including down-regulationofDNA repair proteins, and upregulat ion of death-associatedfactors. In another quantitative proteomicwork performed byQ. Xiong et al., tandem mass tag (TMT) labeling approachwas employed to comprehensively compare the differentialexpression of proteins in receptor activator of nuclear factor-𝜅B ligand- (RANKL-) induced osteoclasts in the presence andabsence of estrogen. In the past several years, we have also

witnessed fast growth inmetabolomics fueled byMS analysis.The wide implementation of MS certainly has resulted inand will continuously benefit advancement in-depth under-standing of biological processes and their molecular mecha-nisms underlying. In terms of biomarker discovery for manyhuman diseases and therapeutics, MS-based proteomics andmetabolomics are playing an important role and the applica-tion of MS to clinical molecular diagnosis will be expected inthe near future. A. Zhang et al. reviewed the metabolomicsfor biomarker discovery and highlighted the importance andbenefit of metabolomics for identifying biomarkers. C.-T.Chang et al. presented a review on recent developments inMS-based quantitative proteomics techniques, high-densitylipoprotein (HDL) proteomics, and lipoprotein modificationin biomarker discovery for atherosclerotic vascular disease.V. Tambor’s group has explored the potential peripartummarkers of infectious-inflammatory complication in pretermbirth. Y. Cheng et al. reported that they implemented acombination of peptide ligand library beads and 1D Gel-LC-MS/MS to serum samples from patients with ovariancancer and from healthy controls. Their proteomic datasuggested that RBP4 protein is a potential biomarker ofovarian cancer. Their ELISA and immunohistochemistryexperiments with RBP4 confirmed the proteomic results. T.Ai’s group presented their study on serum peptide markerdiscovery for gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). MS hasbeen widely used to perform pharmacokinetics studies ofthe effects of biological systems in a determined drug. Here,M. Sanchez-Sierra et al. described MS in pharmacokineticstudies of a synthetic compound for spinal cord injurytreatment. L. Godderis et al. presented another topic which

Hindawi Publishing CorporationBioMed Research InternationalVolume 2015, Article ID 827370, 2 pageshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/827370

2 BioMed Research International

is MS application on analysis of DNA methylation and/orhydroxymethylation. They described a LC-MS/MS methodto quantify and compare simultaneously global methylationand hydroxymethylation in human DNA of different tissues.C. Gao et al. presented a comparative study on Nell-1 hyper-methylation levels among tumor, paracarcinoma, and normaltissues from gastric cancer patients. They found a significantdifference in DNAmethylation status between gastric canceror paracarcinoma and normal tissue. Another topic in thisspecial issue is presented by H. Wang’s group, in whichthey described their successful application of LC-MS to therapid differentiation of 𝛽-lactam and ring-opened 𝛽-lactamimpurities in cefixime, cefdinir, and cefaclor antibiotics.

As Guest Editors of this special issue, we hope to see inthe future that there aremore andmore researchers to presenttheir work in this special issue in this peer-reviewed journalto exchange, promote, and culture our scientific spirits andto accelerate the advance of mass spectrometry itself and itsapplication in biomedical research and clinical diagnosis forthe benefits of human.

Fa-Yun CheHai-Teng DengShi-Jian Ding

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