Proteomics

​Protein compositions in body fluids and tissue are highly complex and change with physiological and pathological conditions. We develop targeted and untargeted LC-MS/MS assays to study protein distributions and profiles in complex biological samples.​

Apolipoproteins play a central role in lipid metabolism and are prognostic biomarkers for disorders of lipoprotein metabolism, which are highly correlated with the development of cardiovascular disease. Despite their diagnostic potential, only few clinical immunoassays are available for the established cardiovascular risk factors apoA-I and apo B. By contrast, we developed a fully validated online SPE-LC-MS/MS method enabling the simultaneous identification and quantification of 12 apolipoproteins from only 3 µl of human blood.​

Cholesin is a recently identified hormone peptide secreted by the intestine and has been shown to be involved in cholesterol metabolism by inhibiting cholesterol synthesis in the liver (Xiaoli Hu et al., Cell, 2024). Little is known about cholesin levels in humans, their dependence on age and gender, and their regulation under physiological and pathophysiological conditions. We develop a targeted high-throughput method for the identification and quantification of cholesin in human blood to investigate whether altered plasma cholesin levels are associated with changes in cholesterol uptake and synthesis, as well as with obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.​

We develop and implement a variety of untargeted proteomic workflows for pathway analysis and biomarker discovery, studying metabolic dysfunction as well as the influence of nutrition and diet on inflammatory signalling and age-related diseases like Alzheimer's disease. Our aim is to combine discovery-based untargeted proteomics, metabolomics and transcriptomics using integrated approaches to enhance our understanding of the regulation of metabolic pathways.​