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Gleason grading is an important prognostic indicator for prostate adenocarcinoma and is crucial for patient treatment decisions. However, intermediate-risk patients diagnosed in the Gleason grade group (GG) 2 and GG3 can harbour either aggressive or non-aggressive disease, resulting in under- or overtreatment of a significant number of patients. Here, we performed proteomic, differential expression, machine learning, and survival analyses for 1,348 matched tumour and benign sample runs from 278 patients. Three proteins (F5, TMEM126B, and EARS2) were identified as candidate biomarkers in patients with biochemical recurrence. Multivariate Cox regression yielded 18 proteins, from which a risk score was constructed to dichotomize prostate cancer patients into low- and high-risk groups. This 18-protein signature is prognostic for the risk of biochemical recurrence and completely independent of the intermediate GG. Our results suggest that markers generated by computational proteomic profiling have the potential for clinical applications including integration into prostate cancer management.

Approximately 70% of clear cell renal cell carcinoma are characterized by the biallelic inactivation of von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) on chromosome 3p. ELOC-mutated (Elongin C-mutated) renal cell carcinoma containing biallelic ELOC inactivations with chromosome 8q deletions are considered a novel subtype of renal cancer possessing a morphological overlap with ccRCC, renal cell carcinoma (RCC) with fibromyomatous stroma exhibiting TSC/mTOR mutations, and clear cell papillary tumor. However, frequency and consequences of ELOC alterations in wild-type VHL ($^{wt}$VHL) and mutated ($^{mt}$VHL) RCC are unclear. In this study, we characterize 123 renal tumors with clear cell morphology and known VHL mutation status to assess the morphological and molecular consequences of ELOC inactivation. Using OncoScan and whole-exome sequencing we identify 18 ELOC deleted RCC, three of which contain ELOC mutations resulting in the biallelic inactivation of ELOC. Biallelic ELOC and biallelic VHL aberrations were mutually exclusive, but two ELOC-mutated RCC showed monoallelic VHL alterations. Further, no mutations in TSC1, TSC2 or mTOR were identified in ELOC-mutated RCC with biallelic ELOC inactivation. Using High Ambiguity Driven Biomolecular Docking we report a novel ELOC variant containing a duplication event disrupting ELOC-VHL interaction alongside the frequently seen Y79C alteration. Using Hyper Reaction Monitoring mass spectrometry (HRM-MS) we show RCC with biallelic ELOC alterations have significantly reduced ELOC expression but similar Carbonic Anhydrase 9 (CAIX) and Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor A (VEGFA) expression when compared to classical ccRCC with biallelic VHL inactivation. The absence of biallelic VHL and TSC1, TSC2 or mTOR inactivation in RCC with biallelic ELOC inactivation (ELOC mutation in combination with ELOC-deletions on chromosome 8q) supports the notion of a novel, molecularly defined tumor entity.

The human pathogen Haemophilus influenzae causes respiratory tract infections and is commonly associated with prolonged carriage in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Production of outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) is a ubiquitous phenomenon observed in Gram-negative bacteria including H. influenzae. OMVs play an important role in various interactions with the human host; from neutralization of antibodies and complement activation to spread of antimicrobial resistance. Upon vesiculation certain proteins are found in OMVs and some proteins are retained at the cell membrane. The mechanism for this phenomenon is not fully elucidated. We employed mass spectrometry to study vesiculation and the fate of proteins in the outer membrane. Functional groups of proteins were differentially distributed on the cell surface and in OMVs. Despite its supposedly periplasmic and outer membrane location, we found that the peptidoglycan synthase-activator Lipoprotein A (LpoA) was accumulated in OMVs relative to membrane fractions. A mutant devoid of LpoA lost its fitness as revealed by growth and electron microscopy. Furthermore, high-pressure liquid chromatography disclosed a lower concentration (55%) of peptidoglycan in the LpoA-deficient H. influenzae compared to the parent wild type bacterium. Using an LpoA-mNeonGreen fusion protein and fluorescence microscopy, we observed that LpoA was enriched in “foci” in the cell envelope, and further located in the septum during cell division. To define the fate of LpoA, C-terminally truncated LpoA-variants were constructed, and we found that the LpoA C-terminal domain promoted optimal transportation to the OMVs as revealed by flow cytometry. Taken together, our study highlights the importance of LpoA for H. influenzae peptidoglycan biogenesis and provides novel insights into cell wall integrity and OMV production.

In the effort of developing new immunotherapies, the sentinel node (SN) has proven a promising source from which to harness an effective antitumour T cell response. However, tumour immune escape, a process in which regulatory T cells (Tregs) play a central role, remains a major limiting factor. Therefore, there is a clear need to increase the knowledge of Treg function and signalling in sentinel nodes. Here, we set out to explore whether the proteome in SN-resident T cells is altered by the tumour and to identify key proteins in SN T cell signalling, focusing on Tregs. Five patients with muscle-invasive urothelial bladder cancer were prospectively included. Mass spectrometry was performed on two patients, with validation and functional studies being performed on three additional patients and four healthy donors. At cystectomy, SN, non-SN lymph nodes and peripheral blood samples were collected from the patients and T cell subsets isolated through flow cytometry before downstream experiments. Proteomic analysis indicated that growth and immune signalling pathways are upregulated in SN-resident Tregs. Furthermore, centrality analysis identified the cytokine IL-16 to be central in the SN-Treg signalling network. We show that tumour-released factors, through activating caspase-3, increase Treg IL-16 processing into bioactive forms, reinforcing Treg suppressive capacity. In conclusion, we provide evidence that Tregs exposed to secreted factors from bladder tumours show increased immune and growth signalling and altered IL-16 processing which translates to enhanced Treg suppressive function, indicating altered IL-16 signalling as a novel tumour immune escape mechanism.

Knowledge about the clonal evolution of a tumor can help to interpret the function of its genetic alterations by identifying initiating events and events that contribute to the selective advantage of proliferative, metastatic, and drug-resistant subclones. Clonal evolution can be reconstructed from estimates of the relative abundance (frequency) of subclone-specific alterations in tumor biopsies, which, in turn, inform on its composition. However, estimating these frequencies is complicated by the high genetic instability that characterizes many cancers. Models for genetic instability suggest that copy number alterations (CNAs) can influence mutation-frequency estimates and thus impede efforts to reconstruct tumor phylogenies. Our analysis suggested that accurate mutation frequency estimates require accounting for CNAs-a challenging endeavour using the genetic profile of a single tumor biopsy. Instead, we propose an optimization algorithm, Chimæra, to account for the effects of CNAs using profiles of multiple biopsies per tumor. Analyses of simulated data and tumor profiles suggested that Chimæra estimates are consistently more accurate than those of previously proposed methods and resulted in improved phylogeny reconstructions and subclone characterizations. Our analyses inferred recurrent initiating mutations in hepatocellular carcinomas, resolved the clonal composition of Wilms' tumors, and characterized the acquisition of mutations in drug-resistant prostate cancers.

Deterioration of biomolecules in clinical tissues is an inevitable pre-analytical process, which affects molecular measurements and thus potentially confounds conclusions from cohort analyses. Here, we investigate the degradation of mRNA and protein in 68 pairs of adjacent prostate tissue samples using RNA-Seq and SWATH mass spectrometry, respectively. To objectively quantify the extent of protein degradation, we develop a numerical score, the Proteome Integrity Number (PIN), that faithfully measures the degree of protein degradation. Our results indicate that protein degradation only affects 5.9% of the samples tested and shows negligible correlation with mRNA degradation in the adjacent samples. These findings are confirmed by independent analyses on additional clinical sample cohorts and across different mass spectrometric methods. Overall, the data show that the majority of samples tested are not compromised by protein degradation, and establish the PIN score as a generic and accurate indicator of sample quality for proteomic analyses.

Formalin‐fixed, paraffin‐embedded (FFPE ), biobanked tissue samples offer an invaluable resource for clinical and biomarker research. Here, we developed a pressure cycling technology (PCT )‐SWATH mass spectrometry workflow to analyze FFPE tissue proteomes and applied it to the stratification of prostate cancer (PC a) and diffuse large B‐cell lymphoma (DLBCL ) samples. We show that the proteome patterns of FFPE PC a tissue samples and their analogous fresh‐frozen (FF ) counterparts have a high degree of similarity and we confirmed multiple proteins consistently regulated in PC a tissues in an independent sample cohort. We further demonstrate temporal stability of proteome patterns from FFPE samples that were stored between 1 and 15 years in a biobank and show a high degree of the proteome pattern similarity between two types of histological regions in small FFPE samples, that is, punched tissue biopsies and thin tissue sections of micrometer thickness, despite the existence of a certain degree of biological variations. Applying the method to two independent DLBCL cohorts, we identified myeloperoxidase, a peroxidase enzyme, as a novel prognostic marker. In summary, this study presents a robust proteomic method to analyze bulk and biopsy FFPE tissues and reports the first systematic comparison of proteome maps generated from FFPE and FF samples. Our data demonstrate the practicality and superiority of FFPE over FF samples for proteome in biomarker discovery. Promising biomarker candidates for PC a and DLBCL have been discovered.