Proteomic analysis of vocal fold fibroblasts exposed to cigarette smoke extract

Reinke’s edema is a cigarette associated, benign, mostly bilateral lesion of the vocal folds leading to dysphonia and dyspnea. Until today information about pathophysiology is only scarce, treatment is only surgical. To explore the pathophysiology of Reinke’s edema, we exposed near primary human vocal fold fibroblasts to cigarette smoke extract enriched medium or air bubbled control for 24 hrs. followed by a proteomic analysis. Proteomic analyses revealed an increase of proteins involved in oxidative stress response. We furthermore found that a significant number of essential extracellular matrix proteins was altered by culturing human VFF with CSE enriched medium: UDP-glucose 6-dehydrogenase, a protein involved in hyaluronan synthesis was upregulated, while the expression of several fibrillar collagen types was significantly reduced. The current findings corroborate previous studies but revealed new insights in possible disease mechanisms of Reinke’s edema too. We postulate that changes in the composition -reduction of collagen fibrils, increase of hyaluronan- of the vocal folds’ ECM may lead to the clinical findings.