Glycopeptide enrichment can be a strategy to allow the detection of
peptides belonging to low abundance
proteins in complex matrixes such as blood serum or plasma. Though several
glycopeptide enrichment protocols have shown excellent sensitivities in this respect, few reports have demonstrated the applicability of these methods to relatively large sample cohorts. In this work, a fast protocol based on TiO2 enrichment and highly sensitive mass spectrometric analysis by Selected Reaction Monitoring (SRM) has been applied to a cohort of serum samples from
prostate cancer and
benign prostatic hyperplasia patients in order to detect low abundance
proteins in a single LC-MS/MS analysis in nanoscale format, without immunodepletion or
peptide fractionation. A
peptide library of over 700 formerly N-glycosylated
peptides was created by data dependent analysis. Then, 16 medium to low abundance
proteins were selected for detection by single injection LC-MS/MS based on selected-reaction monitoring. Results demonstrated the consistent detection of the low-level
proteins under investigation. Following label-free quantification, four
proteins (Adipocyte plasma membrane-associated
protein,
Periostin,
Cathepsin D and
Lysosome-associated membrane glycoprotein 2) were found significantly increased in
prostate cancer sera compared to the control group. Graphical abstract ᅟ.