Plasma Proteomics to Identify Drug Targets for Ischemic Heart Disease
Mohsen Mazidi, Neil Wright, Pang Yao, Christiana Kartsonaki, Iona Y. Millwood, Hannah Fry, Saredo Said, Alfred Pozarickij, Pei Pei, Yiping Chen, Daniel Avery, Huaidong Du, Dan Schmidt, Ling Yang, Jun Lv, Canqing Yu, Junshi Chen, Michael Hill, Michael V. Holmes, Joanna M. M. Howson, Richard Peto, Rory Collins, Derrick Bennett, Robin Walters, Liming Li, Robert Clarke, Zhengming Chen, Junshi Chen, Zhengming Chen, Robert Clarke, Rory Collins, Liming Li, Chen Wang, Jun Lv, Richard Peto, Robin Walters, Daniel Avery, Maxim Barnard, Derrick Bennett, Ruth Boxall, Sushila Burgess, Ka Hung Chan, Yiping Chen, Zhengming Chen, Johnathan Clarke, Robert Clarke, Huaidong Du, Ahmed Edris Mohamed, Hannah Fry, Simon Gilbert, Pek Kei Im, Andri Iona, Maria Kakkoura, Christiana Kartsonaki, Hubert Lam, Kuang Lin, James H. Liu, Mohsen Mazidi, Iona Y. Millwood, Sam Morris, Qunhua Nie, Alfred Pozarickij, Paul Ryder, Saredo Said, Dan Schmidt, Becky Stevens, Iain Turnbull, Robin Walters, Baihan Wang, Lin Wang, Neil Wright, Ling Yang, Xiaoming Yang, Pang Yao, Xiao Han, Can Hou, Qingmei Xia, Chao Liu, Jun Lv, Pei Pei, Dianjanyi Sun, Canqing Yu, Naying Chen, Duo Liu, Zhenzhu Tang, Ningyu Chen, Qilian Jiang, Jian Lan, Mingqiang Li, Yun Liu, Fanwen Meng, Jinhuai Meng, Rong Pan, Yulu Qin, Ping Wang, Sisi Wang, Liuping Wei, Liyuan Zhou, Caixia Dong, Pengfei Ge
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Integrated analyses of plasma proteomic and genetic markers in prospective studies can clarify the causal relevance of proteins and discover novel targets for ischemic heart disease (IHD) and other diseases. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to examine associations of proteomics and genetics data with IHD in population studies to discover novel preventive treatments. METHODS: We conducted a nested case-cohort study in the China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB) involving 1,971 incident IHD cases and 2,001 subcohort participants who were genotyped and free of prior cardiovascular disease. We measured 1,463 proteins in the stored baseline samples using the OLINK EXPLORE panel. Cox regression yielded adjusted HRs for IHD associated with individual proteins after accounting for multiple testing. Moreover, cis-protein quantitative loci (pQTLs) identified for proteins in genome-wide association studies of CKB and of UK Biobank were used as instrumental variables in separate 2-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) studies involving global CARDIOGRAM+C4D consortium (210,842 IHD cases and 1,378,170 controls). RESULTS: Overall 361 proteins were significantly associated at false discovery rate <0.05 with risk of IHD (349 positively, 12 inversely) in CKB, including N-terminal prohormone of brain natriuretic peptide and proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9. Of these 361 proteins, 212 had cis-pQTLs in CKB, and MR analyses of 198 variants in CARDIOGRAM+C4D identified 13 proteins that showed potentially causal associations with IHD. Independent MR analyses of 307 cis-pQTLs identified in Europeans replicated associations for 4 proteins (FURIN, proteinase-activated receptor-1, Asialoglycoprotein receptor-1, and matrix metalloproteinase-3). Further downstream analyses showed that FURIN, which is highly expressed in endothelial cells, is a potential novel target and matrix metalloproteinase-3 a potential repurposing target for IHD. CONCLUSIONS: Integrated analyses of proteomic and genetic data in Chinese and European adults provided causal support for FURIN and multiple other proteins as potential novel drug targets for treatment of IHD.