The proteomic landscape of proteotoxic stress in a fibrogenic liver disease

Abstract

Protein misfolding diseases, including alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AATD), pose significant health challenges, with their cellular progression still poorly understood^1–3. We utilize spatial proteomics by mass spectrometry and machine learning to map AATD in human liver tissue. Combining Deep Visual Proteomics (DVP) with single-cell analysis^4,5, we probe intact patient biopsies to resolve molecular events during hepatocyte stress in pseudo-time across fibrosis stages. We achieve unprecedented proteome depth of up to 3,800 proteins from a third of a single cell in formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue. This dataset revealed a potentially clinically actionable peroxisomal upregulation that precedes the canonical unfolded protein response. Our single-cell proteomics data show alpha-1 antitrypsin accumulation is largely cell-intrinsic, with minimal stress propagation between hepatocytes. We integrated proteomic data with AI-guided image-based phenotyping across multiple disease stages, revealing a terminal hepatocyte state characterized by globular protein aggregates and distinct proteomic signatures, notably including elevated TNFSF10/TRAIL expression. This phenotype may represent a critical disease progression stage. Our study offers novel insights into AATD pathogenesis and introduces a powerful methodology for high-resolution, in situ proteomic analysis of complex tissues. This approach holds potential to unravel molecular mechanisms in various protein misfolding disorders, setting a new standard for understanding disease progression at the single-cell level in human tissue.