SurfaceScout™

Cell-surface or transmembrane proteins represent the targets of 60-70% of FDA-approved drugs, underscoring their significant clinical relevance. The surfaceome contains many key receptors, channels, transporters, and antigens relevant to cellular activity, as well as many disease phenotypes. Surface proteins also make attractive drug targets because of their accessibility, avoiding challenges associated with drug internalization. Whether you're actively targeting a cell-surface protein or simply seeking to understand the surfaceome of a particular cell type or disease SurfaceScout™ can provide high-quality data to support your research efforts.

Briefly, cell surface proteins are labeled via glyco-structures, which can then be recognized for biotinylation by an alkoxyamine-biotin. Following enrichment of biotinylated proteins, samples are prepared for analysis via mass spectrometry. Expert-developed bioinformatics pipelines are then used for the analysis of SurfaceScout™ data.

Cell surface proteins represent one of the most important classes of drug targets and biomarkers. Furthermore, the efficacy and safety of many therapeutics depend on the availability and abundance of cell surface proteins. A comprehensive understanding of the surfaceome can enable targeted drug delivery to specific tissues or cell types, optimization of macromolecular uptake for ASOs and siRNAs, and development of therapeutic antibodies and immunotherapies acting in the extracellular space. SurfaceScout™ supports these efforts by providing valuable information about the identity and abundance of cell surface proteins.

Yes – SurfaceScout™ readily provides support for the discovery, validation, and analysis of cell surface biomarkers.

The low abundance and poor solubility of many cell surface proteins has made their identification and interrogation by traditional proteomic techniques challenging. Cell surface proteins are often inadequately detected by generic workflows. As a specialized workflow for surfaceome analysis, SurfaceScout™ leverages specific enrichment techniques to enable the comprehensive analysis of these targets.

Yes – our ASMS workflow is well-suited for the screening of cell surface proteins. In collaboration with our partners at Cube Biotech, NativeMP™ technology is used to stabilize membrane targets in a native-like lipid environment, allowing these targets to be screened effectively. A paired screen-counterscreen approach is used to remove lipid binders from the hit pool, resulting in the specific detection of target binders. You can learn more about ASMS services here, or click here to explore the results of a hit discovery and expansion project targeting the GLP1 receptor.