The characterization of preterm newborn saliva by top-down proteomic as a stimulus for the study of human development. A review of the results obtained over the past 25 years

Around the first years of 2000, our teams, at the Cagliari and Catholic- Policlinico Gemelli (Rome) Universities, started an investigation of the intact proteins of human saliva by a top-down pipeline. Since one of the most interesting topics of our research was the study of molecular events occurring during fetal development, we carried out the top-down proteomic analysis on whole saliva of human preterm newborns, induced by the non-invasive specimen collection. The results obtained showed a proteome profile of human preterm newborns sensibly different from that of adults, and they were a stimulus for the study of the variation of several proteins during development, with the support of immunohistochemical methods on tissues obtained at autopsy. This review describes the main results obtained over around 25 years of research.