Analysis of Intimal Proteoglycans in Atherosclerosis-prone and

The propensity to develop atherosclerosis varies mark-edly among different sites in the human vasculature. To determine a possible cause for such differences in ather-osclerosis susceptibility, a proteomics-based approach was used to assess the extracellular proteoglycan core protein composition of intimal hyperplasia from both the atherosclerosis-prone internal carotid artery and the ath-erosclerosis-resistant internal thoracic artery. The intimal proteoglycan composition in these preatherosclerotic le-sions was found to be more complex than previously appreciated with up to eight distinct core proteins pres-ent, including the large extracellular proteoglycans versi-can and aggrecan, the basement membrane proteoglycan perlecan, the class I small leucine-rich proteoglycans bi-glycan and decorin, and the class II small leucine-ric