Proteomic Profiling of Iron Overload-Induced Human Hepatic Cells Reveals Activation of TLR2-Mediated Inflammatory Response.

BACKGROUND Hepatic iron overload is common in patients who have undergone hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) and may predispose to peri- and post-HCT toxicity. To better reveal more molecules that might be involved in iron overload-induced liver injury, we utilized proteomics to investigate differentially expressed proteins in iron overload-induced hepatocytes vs. untreated hepatocytes. METHODS AND RESULTS HH4 hepatocytes were exposed to ferric ammonium citrate (FAC) to establish an in vitro iron overload model. Differentially expressed proteins initiated by the iron overload were studied by two-dimensional liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (2D-LC-MS) analysis. We identified 93 proteins whose quantity statistically significantly changes under excess hepatocyte iron conditions. Gene Ontology (GO) analysis showed that these differentially expressed proteins in HH4 cells are involved in various biological process including endocytosis, response to wounding, di-, trivalent inorganic cation homeostasis, inflammatory response, positive regulation of cytokine production, and etc. Meanwhile, proteomics data revealed protein level of TLR2 and IL6ST significantly increased 7 times and 2.9 times, respectively, in iron overloaded HH4 cells. Our subsequent experiments detected that FAC-treated HH4 cells can activate IL6 expression through TLR2-mediated inflammatory responses via the NF-κB pathway. CONCLUSIONS In this study, we demonstrated that iron overload induced hepatocytes triggering TLR2-mediated inflammatory response via NF-κB signaling pathway in HH4 cells.