School of Medicine

Project(s) for intake 2021:

The proteinuria is widely recognized as a marker of kidney disease severity, as well as the predictor of renal function decline, cardiovascular outcomes, and all-cause mortality. However, severity of kidney disease progression and these outcomes differs among patients with various amount of proteinuria. The potential mechanism underlining this disparity may be relevant to the quality and quantity of filtered proteins, especially their mechano-chemical properties such as physical viscosity and stiffness, amino-acid sequence, and molecular weight (low, middle and high molecular weight proteins). Our main interest is to develop and validate combined Brillouin & Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) Spectroscopy technique for simultaneous non-contact assessment of visco-elastic and chemical properties of urine proteins.

Additionally, liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) will be used for profiling of urinary proteins. Data analysis will be performed through Mascot software using the SwissProt protein database. Furthermore, protein samples differentiated according to their molecular weights will be separately assessed by Dual Raman-Brillouin hybrid system for comparative mechano-chemical characteristics and correlations.

Previous studies demonstrated that LC-MS could identify low-weight molecular urinary proteins that cannot be detectable in routine immunochemistry assay, and early discover microalbuminuria in diabetes and hypertension.

Systematic studies on mechano-chemical (by optic laser) properties of proteins in urine samples to be taken from diseased and healthy subjects will be cross-validated by reversed-phase LC-MS. The project ultimately aims for development of optical spectroscopic sensor for rapid, non-contact monitoring of urine samples from patients in clinical setting.