*Proteomics

Proteomics involves quantifying the proteins present in a sample, and this information can be used to identify important biological pathways, biomarkers for diseases, and potential drug targets.

Proteomics data will soon be avaible for the NCDS cohort (N=8005)

Panels

NCDS samples were analysed using the Target 96 Organ Damage Panel (https://olink.com/products-services/target/cardiometabolic-panel/), and the Target 96 CVD II Panel (https://olink.com/products-services/target/biological-process/). Each of these panels measures 96 proteins.

A sub-set of 176 samples were analysed using the Explore 3072 Panel, which measures 3,072 proteins (https://olink.com/products-services/explore/). This is a combination of 8 separate Explore 384 panels: Inflammation, Oncology, Cardiometabolic, Neurology, Inflammation II, Oncology II, Cardiometabolic II and Neurology II. The 176 individuals on whose blood this additional analysis was conducted were randomly selected from a sub-sample of >1,000 participants where DNA methylation analysis had previously been conducted (https://cls-genetics.github.io/docs/NCDS.html).

The results of the analyses are provided in the data in Olink’s Normalized Protein Expression (NPX) units, quantifying the relative concentration of a specific protein on a log2 scale. NPX data allow users to identify differences in the levels of the same protein across the set of samples analysed in the same run, but cannot be used to compare concentrations of different proteins of the same panel, nor to compare values of a given protein to NPX values in other datasets produced in separate experiments, i.e.from other studies (https://olink.com/faq/what-is-npx/).

Data availability

Proteomics data are soon to be available for the NCDS cohort. They will be availble via the UKDS.