PROTEOMICS APPROACH IN THE DISCOVERY OF DIFFERENTIALLY-REGULATED HOST FACTORS IN HAND, FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE (HFMD)

Abstract

Hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) is a contagious childhood viral disease that brings about much inconvenience to parents, guardians, and caregivers of infected young pre-adolescences. Over the past two decades, the escalating cases of HFMD have brought the once intermittent childhood disease to the attention of public healthcare authorities worldwide. Despite the highly unjustifiable disease burdens associated with this generally self-limiting disease, there are currently no POC diagnostics to accurately and rapidly detect diseased individuals, multi-valent prophylactic vaccines to prevent the disease, or effective broad-spectrum anti-viral drugs to treat the disease. Hence, there is an urgent need to expedite the progress of both basic and translational HFMD research to address these issues. This study focused on the proteomics aspects of HFMD research, both on clinical studies using patient samples, as well as in vitro studies using permissive cell lines.