Multimodal single cell-resolved spatial proteomics reveals pancreatic tumor heterogeneity

Abstract Despite the advances in antibody-guided cell typing and mass spectrometry-based proteomics, their integration is hindered by challenges for processing rare cells in the heterogeneous tissue context. Here, we introduce Spatial and Cell-type Proteomics (SCPro), which combines multiplexed imaging and flow cytometry with ion exchange-based protein aggregation capture technology to characterize spatial proteome heterogeneity with single cell resolution. The SCPro was employed to explore the pancreatic tumor microenvironment and revealed the spatial alternations of over 5,000 proteins by automatically dissecting up to 100 single cells guided by multi-color imaging of centimeter-scale formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue slide. To enhance cell-type resolution, we characterized the proteome of 14 different cell types by sorting up to 1,000 cells from the same tumor, which allows us to deconvolute the spatial distribution of immune cell subtypes and leads to the discovery of a novel subtype of regulatory T cells. Together, the SCPro provides a multimodal spatial proteomics approach for profiling tissue proteome heterogeneity.