Background: Chronic wounds place a significant burden on the economy, society, and a patient’s quality of life. Reducing treatment times would alleviate the pressure placed on the healthcare system and mitigate the impact on the patient. Molecular indicators of healing have been of interest as these could be developed into tools, which may assist with treatment management. Our aim was to generate a library of quantified proteins present in wound fluid to use in biomarker research.
Methods: Fifty-seven wound fluid samples were collected from fourteen consenting patients, who presented at the QUT Wound Healing Service Clinic, over a 24 week treatment period. The majority of patient ulcers were of mixed (venous and arterial) or venous aetiologies. We have undertaken a proteomics-based approach to profile the proteome of wound fluids using mass spectrometry and SWATH™ acquisition. Subsequently, the wound fluid proteomes of ulcers with healing and non-healing outcomes were compared.
Results: We have measured the changes in the abundance of over 1000 proteins and compared these between healing and non-healing chronic wounds. Various trends in abundance changes for multiple proteins were determined. These trends revealed the presence of specific proteins that correlated with either healing or non-healing outcomes. In addition, previous studies have reported on the classification between acute and chronic wounds based on differences in the abundance of proteins; in particular, proteins within the annexin and matrix-metalloproteinase families. Results from our data analysis on the abundance of these proteins revealed no significant differences between healing and non-healing outcomes for chronic wounds. This suggested that some proteins, which are indicative of chronic wound status, may not be useful as markers of wound outcome.
Conclusion: We have generated an inventory of the wound fluid proteome of chronic ulcers. We have used this inventory to identify a number of protein markers that correlate with the healing outcome of chronic wounds. These markers have the potential to be translated into tools for use in clinical wound management.