Proteomic technologies for identification of serum biomarkers of potential autoimmune demyelinating polyneuropathies

Time-of-flight MALDI mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) profiling of blood serum of patients with Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS, 36 samples), chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP, 24 samples), and practically healthy donors (HD, 35 samples) was carried out in order to identify potential biomarkers of autoimmune demyelinating polyneuropathies (ADP). To simplify the peptide-protein mixture of serum prior to MALDI-TOF-MS analysis, samples were prefractionated on magnetic beads with a weak cation-exchange (MB-WCX) surface. Comparative analysis of mass spectrometric data using the classification algorithms (genetic and neural network-controlled) revealed a characteristic set of peaks and a correlating change area with a high specificity and sensitivity of the differentiated mass spectrometry profiles of the blood serum of patients with DPNP and healthy donors (for GBS, values of these characteristics reached 100 and 100%, and for CIDP, 94.1 and 100% respectively). Comparative analysis of mass spectrometric profiles of serum samples obtained from patients with GBS and CIDP allowed us to build a classification model to differentiate these diseases from each other, with a specificity of 88.9 and a sensitivity of 80%.