Investigation of short-term effects of colchicine on blood proteins using proteomics

The anti-inflammatory medication colchicine has been shown to significantly improve cardiovascular outcomes post heart attack and in chronic heart disease patient groups, suggesting it may be a suitable candidate for repurposing in cardiovascular diseases.

Our recent study investigating the mouse serum proteome identified (i) complement and (ii) coagulation as the two main processes affected by colchicine after a single dose of the drug (0.4 mg/kg). We believe these properties contribute to cardioprotective action of the drug. Our study was done on animals, so we now wish to test whether we can detect similar changes in blood from healthy people and people with cardiovascular disease.

The purpose of the current studentship is, therefore, to measure serum or plasma proteomes before and after colchicine administration in colchicine-naïve volunteers. This approach is much preferable to observational studies, data from which would inevitably be liable to confounding, although we may include this sort of investigation as part of the study as well, as Dundee has some of the best curated electronic health records in the world (such as GoShare). The outcome will be cross-validation that the effects that we observe in animals, are relevant to humans/ human disease.

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