Immunoproteomic Identification and Characterization of Leishmania Membrane Proteins as Non-Invasive Diagnostic Candidates for Clinical Visceral Leishmaniasis

Visceral leishmaniasis (VL), a potentially fatal disease is an outcome of infection caused by the parasite Leishmania donovani . The clinical diagnostic tests for this disease are still related to invasive tissue aspiration or serological immunochromatography. Advancements in immunoproteomics such as two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, mass spectrometry, B cell epitope prediction, and peptide synthesis have enabled researchers to discover newer biomarkers for disease diagnosis. In this study, we have screened several urine-reactive leishmanial membrane proteins as potential biomarker candidates. In the immunoblot assay, three proteins 51, 55 and 63 kDa showed 100% reactivity to the urine of 47 VL patients and nonreactive to 18 healthy and other diseases. Mass spectrometry revealed the identity of 51, 55 and 63 kDa proteins as elongation factor 1α (EF1-α), α-tubulin, and glycoprotein 63, respectively. B cell reactive epitopes of these proteins were mapped through bioinformatic tools and one epitope from each protein that had the highest score were synthesized. All the three native electroeluted proteins and their corresponding synthetic peptides were tested through ELISA for reactivity with VL and control urine samples. While all three demonstrated good reactivity, the diagnostic performance of EF1-α was the best. Our findings illustrate the use of urine-based proteomic approach for biomarker discovery in non-invasive clinical diagnosis of VL.