3.3 FCGBP is a novel indicator for predicting the progress of SMPP
Among all the identified proteins which were differentially expressed, FCGBP was one of the most altered protein with highest fold change. We then used ELISA to explore its serum expression level between GMPP and SMPP patients, and tried to investigate the relationship between FCGBP level and the progress of MPP. On the first day of admission, SMPP patients showed a higher FCGBP expression tendency (88.22 ± 17.48 ng/mL, n=16) than that in GMPP patients (50.97 ±10.24 ng/mL, n=7) but did not reach a statistic significance (Figure 2A, P = 0.057). In the late stage of disease, SMPP patients exhibited a significantly higher FCGBP expression than the GMPP patients (Figure 2B, P = 0.0039). During the disease course, the expression level of serum FCGBP in GMPP group exhibited a decreased trend while the SMPP group showed the opposite trend after appropriate treatment (Figure 2C, 2D). Severe sequelae like BO tend to occur at SMPP patients. These data implicated that FCGBP may be a promising indicator for predicting the progression of SMPP and patients who maintain high serum level of FCGBP during treatment may have a poor prognosis comparing with who decrease.
3.4 Potential TFs regulating FCGBP expression
The mechanism under the dysregulated expression of FCGBP remains poorly illuminated. Since TF controls the correct gene expression from DNA to message RNA, we subjected FCGBP to Cistrome Data Browser toolkit in order to predict potential TFs, detailed information was described in method section. Figure 3 shows the identified TFs.