| Summary: | Objective To investigate the tear proteomics of treatment-naïve eyes with naïve neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) and screen differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) so as to identify potential biomarkers. Methods The tear samples of 33 untreated nAMD patients (16 females and 17 males, 70.53±10.56 years old) and another 30 healthy volunteers (16 females and 14 males, 66.64±8.46 years old, with no ocular fundus diseases) were harvested in our hospital from July 2017 to March 2018. Tandem mass tag (TMT) was performed to identify the DEPs, and the obtained proteins were further analyzed using bioinformatics to screen the candidate proteins with potential prospects. In addition, parallel reaction monitoring (PRM) was used to verify the expression of selected biomarkers in the tear samples of nAMD patients. Results A total of 3 473 proteins were identified and quantified from the tear samples of the two groups, including 382 DEPs, with 122 of them up-regulated and 260 down-regulated (P < 0.05). Gene Ontology (GO) functional enrichment analysis and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis showed that these DEPs were mainly involved in the regulation of immune response and oxidative stress. Among these proteins, monoamine oxidase A (MAOA), transaldolase (TAL) and lysosome associated membrane protein (LAMP-2) were selected as potential biomarkers, whose expressions were then successfully verified by PRM, indicating consistency with the quantitative proteomic results of TMT. Conclusion TMT relative quantification and PRM targeting verification effectively screen out 382 differential proteins from tear samples between nAMD patients and healthy population, and provide 3 potential biomarkers for nAMD diagnosis.
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