Currently, only about 800 targets are addressed by FDA-approved drugs, leaving many disease-related targets untapped. Traditional drug screening using purified proteins faces challenges like expression issues, purity, and activity preservation, especially for membrane proteins. This often hinders the initial step of target protein purification.
Chemical proteomics revolutionizes drug discovery by moving from purified proteins to live cells. For example, in covalent drug discovery, diverse small molecules are applied to live cells, ensuring proteins are in their natural state. ABPP (activity-based protein profiling) then captures and analyzes each compound's binding to target proteins, building a database of interactions.
