The spatiotemporal progression of amyloid pathology in Alzheimer's disease (AD) follows a characteristic pattern, spreading from the cortex to the hippocampus brain regions. However, analytical methods for comparative profiling of amyloid plaque composition between these two regions are limited. Herein, we developed a small molecule guided method to selectively label, enrich, profile and compare amyloid interactome in cortical and hippocampal regions of AD brain tissue. We embarked on rational design of probes to transform Congo Red derivatives from amyloid chromophore to singlet fluorescent sensor, and finally to triplet photocatalytic labeling probe. While retaining the amyloid binding selectivity, P5 outperformed other probes in photocatalytic labeling of recombinant amyloid proteins and amyloid deposits from AD mouse brain tissues. We applied P5 to selectively labeling and enrichment of amyloid plaques in hippocampus and cortex, respectively. The robustness of our methodology was confirmed by the consistent identification of established AD biomarkers (e.g., APP, ApoE) in both regions. Subsequent comparative proteomics not only demonstrated the critical involvement of the mitophagy-lysosome axis in AD pathogenesis, but also uncovered a previously unrecognized region-specific functional divergence. Proteomic profiles distinguished that AD's cortex primarily involves upstream mitophagy, whereas AD's hippocampus actively triggers downstream lysosomal degradation. Overall, we report a small-molecule-based photocatalytic proteomic profiling method to resolve amyloid deposits and elucidate their region-specific interactome heterogeneity.
Yan et al. (2026) studied this question.