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Defining uterine receptivity
Summary
The endometrium allows implantation of an embryo for only a few days in each menstrual cycle: if this ‘receptivity' is not established the woman will be infertile. It is also a major reason for failure of IVF. Our proteomics approach is defining the receptive endometrium and identifying discriminative markers for infertility.
Description
This project is examining how the proteome of the endometrium changes with the menstrual cycle and how this may be altered in women with infertility.
Our strategy has been to subject cohorts of tissues to differential in gel electrophoresis that enables differences between the cohorts to be identified and analysed by bioinformatic means. Identified proteins have been further validated and their cellular location within the tissue defined using immunohistochemical techniques.
Data has also been compared with gene array information: it is interesting that many changes in the genome are not reflected in the proteome, emphasising that many genes are not translated into protein and that post-translational modifications are common.
Among the cohorts examined are infertile women who did or did not become pregnant in the IVF cycle in which their endometrium was sampled.
While this approach has provided important information on the changing endometrial proteome, new developments in proteomic approaches at Prince Henry's Institute, which include new techniques for pre-fractionation of the tissue extracts, are expected to identify a greater range of bioactive molecules of relevance to infertility.
These studies are ongoing.
Funding
Monash IVF
National Health and Medical Research Council
Outcomes
Identification and validation of differences in the proteome of endometrial tissue in the proliferative and secretory phases of the menstrual cycle
Identification of cohorts of endometrial proteins that differed between women who do or do not become pregnant in an IVF cycle
Selected Publications
Chen J I-C, Hannan NJ, Mak Y, Nicholls PK, Zhang J, Rainczuk, A Stanton PG, Robertson DM, Salamonsen LA, Stephens AN (2009). Proteomic characterization of mid-proliferative and mid-secretory human endometrium. Journal of Proteome Research [E-pub 17th Feb]