Hupo - Human Proteome Organisation

The number of patients, who need to be treated with hemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis therapy due to chronic renal failure is continuously increasing worldwide. Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a main cause of the chronic renal failure. This increase is not only painful for CKD patients, but also serious problem for social medication. Reason of the increase could be explained by lack of efficient and curative therapeutics for these patients, probably due to our insufficient knowledge of molecular mechanisms underlying the progression of CKD despite of a great number of clinical and experimental studies.

We have launched the Human Kidney and Urine Proteome Project (HKUPP) in October 2005 by gathering more than 30 investigators worldwide and aimed to understand kidney functions and causes and progression mechanisms of CKD at a protein level.

HKUPP is an international collaborative research project for human kidney and urine proteomes, in which more than 150 participating colleagues collect and share proteomics data on the kidney and urine in order to understand functions of the kidney and mechanisms of the disease progression, and finally to discover biomarkers and target molecules for new therapeutics of kidney diseases. The HKUPP has been recently approved as one of HUPO-sponsored scientific initiatives in October 2007. The data and information obtained in the project are open to the public through publications and the HKUPP website to encourage the spread of proteomics technologies in nephrology and to disseminate knowledge pertaining to the human kidney and urine proteomes.

Our mission

• To facilitate proteome analysis and foster proteomics researchers in nephrology
• To understand kidney functions and pathophysiology of kidney diseases
• To provide kidney and urine proteome databases for discovery of biomarkers and drug targets of kidney diseases

Short-term Action Plans

The HKUPP will provide guidelines or standard procedures for non-proteiuric urine proteomics; procedures for collection and storage of urine samples, and for preparation and separation of protein from the samples. The draft will be released in 2008.

The HKUPP will construct integrated databases of human kidney and urine proteomes and release at the HKUPP website for references to studies in nephrology and other fields. Proteome databases for normal human urine (http://www.mapuproteome.com/urine/), normal human kidney glomerulus (http://www.hkupp.org/), rat collecting duct (http://cddb.nhlbi.nih.gov/cddb/), and rat collecting duct phosphoproteins (http://dir.nhlbi.nih.gov/papers/lkem/cdpd/) have been accessible at the web.

Collaborations with other Initiatives

• The HKUPP is committed to interact with HAI to validate the kidney and urine proteome analysis by expression and tissue localization of proteins in normal and disease conditions.
• Bioinformatics, data-accumulation and -profiling are being coordinated with PSI.
• The urine proteome is highly related with plasma proteome and also kidney proteome, therefore, coordination with HPPP are essential for evaluation of urine proteome data.
• To understand unique functions of the kidney or to discover unique mechanisms to proceed kidney diseases, identification of kidney-unique proteins or protein interactions is important, which is achieved by comparing kidney proteome with other organ proteomes underlying HBPP, HLPP, HCVP and etc.