Evaluating the clinical utility of measuring levels of factor H and the related proteins

After years of disappointing clinical results, the tide has finally changed and complement targeted-therapies have become a validated and accepted treatment option for several diseases. These accomplishments have revitalized the field and brought renewed attention to the prospects that complement therapeutics can offer. Streamlining diagnostics and therapeutics is imperative in this new era of clinical use of complement therapeutics. However, the incredible success in therapeutics has not been accompanied by the development of novel standardized tools for complement testing. Complement biomarkers can assist in the risk assessment and diagnosis of diseases as well as the prediction of disease progression and treatment response. Recently, a group of complement proteins has been suggested to be highly relevant in various complement-associated disorders, namely the human factor H (FH) protein family. This family of closely related proteins consists of FH, FH-like protein 1, and five factor H-related proteins, and they have been linked to eye, kidney, infectious, vascular, and autoimmune diseases as well as cancer. The goal of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview of the available data on circulating levels of FH and its related proteins in different pathologies. In addition, we examined the current literature to determine the clinical utility of measuring levels of the FH protein family in health and disease. Finally, we discuss future steps that are needed to make their clinical translation a reality.