Spatial proteomics on repurposed sequencers reveals early astrocytic remodeling in an ALS mouse model

GFAP-high spatial neighborhoods expand around motor neurons at disease onset in the SOD1-G93A mouse lumbar spinal cord, with 43% of motor neurons embedded versus 15% in wild-type.

• Why it matters: Spatial proteomics needs validated antibodies, consistent processing, and integrated analysis to compare replicated tissue cohorts, especially in ALS where pathology varies by region and stage.
• What they did: An end-to-end workflow used a validated 28-antibody panel with automated fluorescence decoding on repurposed high-throughput sequencers, then multicycle image processing, cellular profiling, and probabilistic spatial-neighborhood analysis across 70 lumbar sections from nine SOD1-G93A and nine wild-type mice.
• The result: Motor-neuron environments are already remodeled at disease onset, with GFAP-high neighborhood expansion in ventral gray matter that precedes later non-reactive gray matter decline and detectable motor-neuron loss.

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