Human Liver Proteome Project
Overview of Project
The Human Liver Proteome Project (HLPP) is a large-scale international collaborative initiative focusing on the proteomic analysis of the human liver. It aims to generate a comprehensive protein atlas of the human liver, uncover the proteomic basis of liver development, physiology and pathology and develop liver-specific diagnostics and therapeutics.
The scientific objectives are: Sampling and Banking, Expression Profiling, Protein Linkage (Protein-Protein Interaction) Mapping and ORFeome, Modification Profiling, Localization Mapping, Antibody Banking, Bioinformatics, and Liver Diseases. Each subproject is under the supervision of a subcommittee led by a specialized scientist.
In the past five years, under the efforts of HLPP international consortium, we set up standard operating procedures, optimized the strategies for proteomic analysis and investigated the proteomes of fetal liver tissues and adult liver tissues. The initial goal of identifying 5000 unique proteins has been reached. Meanwhile, more than 100 “normal” liver samples, in addtion to the diseased ones, have been collected with detailed information. 5500 ORFs of genes expressed in human liver have been collected in an ORF bank in China. A network was depicted by bioinformatics for more than 1,000 protein-protein interactions which were found in the human liver and some of them have been validated. More than 1900 hybridoma cell lines were established and classified, in which 1410 were characterized as mAbs for more than 150 different proteins. The proteomic changes in liver tissues and plasma were studied and compared during the progression of liver diseases, from the “normal liver” to hepatitis, hepatic fibrosis, hepatocirrhosis, HCC staging and its metastasis. Tens of potential biomarkers for liver disease have been found and are being further validated. Other subprojects, such as post-translational modifications and proteome localizations, focused on technology development and also progress steadily.
HLPP Newsletters
Key Documents Related to Activities
- HLPP Bethesda Workshop Summary July 2003
- HLPP Bethesda Workshop Recommendations for US participation July 2003
- HLPP Update-May 2003
- Proposal Update
- Human Liver Proteome Project: Plan, Progress and Perspectives
- Report of the HLPP Workshop 2005, Munich, Germany
- Report of the 7th and 8th HLPP Workshops 2006, Bilbao, Spain and Long Beach, California
- HLPP Introduction in Molecular and Cellular Proteomics
- Report of the 9th HLPP Workshop October 2007, Seoul, Korea
- Report of the 10th HLPP Workshop August 2008, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (coming soon)
