Niemann-Pick Type C disease (NPC) is a lethal, autosomal recessive disorder caused by mutations in the NPC1 and NPC2 cholesterol transport proteins. NPC's hallmark symptoms include an accumulation of unesterified cholesterol and other lipids in the late endosomal and lysosomal cellular compartments, causing progressive neurodegeneration and death. Although the age of onset may vary in those aff...

Thyroid ultrasound and ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration (USG/FNA) biopsy are currently used for diagnosing papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), but their detection limit could be improved by combining other biomarkers. To discover novel PTC biomarkers, we herein applied a GeLC-MS/MS strategy to analyze the proteome profiles of serum-abundant-protein-depleted FNA cystic fluid from benign a...

Niemann-Pick C1 (NPC1) and NPC2 proteins are indispensable for the export of LDL-derived cholesterol from late endosomes. Mutations in these proteins result in Niemann-Pick type C disease, a lysosomal storage disease. Despite recent reports of the NPC1 structure depicting its overall architecture, the function of its C-terminal luminal domain (CTD) remains poorly understood even though 45% of N...

Niemann-Pick Type C (NP-C) disease, caused by mutations in either human NPC1 (hNPC1) or human NPC2 (hNPC2), is characterized by the accumulation of unesterified cholesterol in late endosomes. Although it is known that the NP-C proteins are targeted to late endosomal/lysosomal compartments, their delivery mechanisms have not been fully elucidated. To identify mechanisms regulating NP-C protein l...

α-Mannosidosis is a rare lysosomal storage disease with accumulation of undegraded mannosyl-linked oligosaccharides in cells throughout the body, most notably in the CNS. This leads to a broad spectrum of neurological manifestations, including progressive intellectual impairment, disturbed motor functions, and cerebellar atrophy. To develop therapeutic outcome measures for enzyme replacement th...

Niemann-Pick disease type C (NPC) is a genetic disorder in which patient cells exhibit lysosomal accumulation of cholesterol and sphingolipids (SLs) caused by defects in either NPC1 or NPC2 proteins. We previously demonstrated that NPC1 human skin fibroblasts overexpressing endosomal Rab proteins (Rab7 or Rab9) showed a correction in the storage disease phenotype. In the current study, we used ...

BACKGROUND It has been reported that oxidation product of cholesterol, 7-ketocholesterol, increases in plasma of patients with NP-C. Previously, we established a rapid test to determine the plasma 7-ketocholesterol level and found it elevated significantly in patients with acid sphingomyelinase deficient NPD and NP-C disease. METHODS Individuals randomly referred to our outpatient clinics in ...