Proteome-Wide Monitoring of Drug Action in Living Cells Using a Novel Label-Free Solvent-Based Shift Assay

Biophysical proteomics assays allow for proteome-wide, label-free monitoring of ligand-induced changes in protein structure and stability, offering insights into protein-ligand interactions and modulation of biophysical properties of cellular proteins. These assays exploit the principle that compound-induced alterations in structure or stability of proteins can be detected through changes in their susceptibility to denaturation. Here, we introduce solvent proteome profiling in cells (SPICE), which employs solvent-based denaturation of proteins under otherwise physiological conditions in intact cells. We characterized solvent-induced denaturation of proteins inside cells as distinct from that in cell extracts and validated SPICE by detecting known drug-target interactions for multiple compound classes. Our results indicate that SPICE, unlike experiments in cell extracts, also detects secondary compound-induced effects such as target profiles of drug metabolites, modulation of protein-protein interactions, and downstream signaling events. We further demonstrate complementarity of SPICE and cellular thermal shift assay, which both robustly detect the designated targets of well-characterized drugs and individually provide biologically meaningful and interpretable results. Finally, we show that SPICE can detect covalent drug-targets, compound-induced target-destabilization and stabilization of degrader drug targets despite their concurrent degradation.

 

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Steinbrunn D*, Cepeleaga C*, Betz A*, Kibar G*, Holzner M*, Maier SK*, Zasada C*, Hagemann G*, Sieber SA & Hahne H*. Proteome-Wide Monitoring of Drug Action in Living Cells Using a Novel Label-Free Solvent-Based Shift Assay. Mol Cell Proteomics 24, 101444 (2025).

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