Proteins in cord blood as a new target for prevention and treatment of bronchopulmonary dysplasia: a proteomic analysis

Abstract This study aimed to explore the proteins in cord blood that could regulate the development of neonatal bronchi and lungs, and to find a new target for the prevention and treatment of bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD). In this study, proteomic analysis was used to analyze the proteins in cord blood of preterm and term infants. A total of 100 differentially expressed (57 up-regulated and 43 down-regulated) proteins were identified from preterm with BPD and term infants cord blood (fold change ≥ 1.5, P value < 0.05). GO analysis revealed that the major enrichment functions of these differential proteins were multi-organism process, stimulus, immune system process growth, reproductive process, development process and antioxidant activity. The signaling pathways involved included insulin resistance, insulin signaling pathway, IL−17 signaling pathway, PI3K−Akt signaling pathway, NF−kappa B signaling pathway, glucagon signaling pathway, apoptosis, MAPK signaling pathway, as well as glycolysis/gluconeogenesis. Further protein and protein interact (PPI) analysis revealed that the interacting proteins involved were PGAM1, CNN2, HSP90AA and DAG1, which were all crucial in the development of BPD. We found that these differential proteins in cord blood might regulate bronchopulmonary development through the abovementioned signaling pathways or their interaction proteins, which may provide a new research direction for the intervention of BPD.