Analysis of pediatric obstructive nephropathy using protein antibody arrays and computational techniques

Obstructive Nephropathy (ON) is a renal disease quite frequent in newborns and children. Although it is caused by the improper flow of urine, the nephron destruction can be magnified by various molecular processes. In the current work, we aim to study 725 antibodies spotted on antibody arrays for a set of 20 pediatric subjects divided into four groups according to ON status: control, children with mild obstruction and two groups of children with severe obstruction. To this end, Gene ARMADA, an integrated platform for microarray data analysis, was employed to identify 43 differentially expressed antibodies in urine along the four subject groups and cluster these into groups of similarly expressed proteins. The differentially expressed proteins were then related to Gene Ontology terms (GOTs) and over-presented GOTs were identified.