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Updated: Sep 5, 2025

Mass Cytometry Analysis of Systemic and Local Immune Responses in Hepatocellular Carcinoma
Published on: April 25, 2025
A Cytological Atlas of the Human Liver Proteome from PROTEOMESKY-LIVERHu 2.0, a Publicly Available Database
Yuanxiang Lao1,2, Yanyan Li1,3, Wei Wang1
1State Key Laboratory of Proteomics, Beijing Proteome Research Center, National Center of Protein Sciences (Beijing), Beijing Institute of Lifeomics, Beijing 102206, China.
Abstract:
The liver plays a unique role as a metabolic center of the body, and also performs other important functions such as detoxification and immune response. Here, we establish a cell type-resolved healthy human liver proteome including hepatocytes (HCs), hepatic stellate cells (HSCs), Kupffer cells (KCs), and liver sinusoidal endothelial cells (LSECs) by high-resolution mass spectrometry. Overall, we quantify total 8354 proteins for four cell types and over 6000 proteins for each cell type. Analysis of this data set and regulatory pathway reveals the cellular labor division in the human liver follows the pattern that parenchymal cells make the main components of pathways, but nonparenchymal cells trigger these pathways. Human liver cells show some novel molecular features: HCs maintain KCs and LSECs homeostasis by producing cholesterol and ketone bodies; HSCs participate in xenobiotics metabolism as an agent deliverer; KCs and LSECs mediate immune response through MHC class II-TLRs and MHC class I-TGFβ cascade, respectively; and KCs play a central role in diurnal rhythms regulation through sensing diurnal IGF and temperature flux. Together, this work expands our understandings of liver physiology and provides a useful resource for future analyses of normal and diseased livers.
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