We are very happy to announce that our latest story was published in the Science magazine yesterday!

In this study, we introduce decryptM, a proteomic technique in which cells are treated with increasing concentrations of a drug, followed by enrichment for post-translational modifications (PTMs) - for example phosphorylation, acetylation, or ubiquitinylation. All dose-dependent treatments are then measured together using LC/MS-MS. This allows us to derive dose-response characteristics on the level of individual peptides. Thus, decryptM can help to understand target and pathway engagement and decrypt the mode of action of drugs. 

We applied the approach to 13 human cancer cell lines and 31 cancer drugs, resulting in ~1.8 million dose-response curves. This helped us, for example, to identify novel phosphorylation sites that link chemotherapeutics to DNA damage response, and to derive a new theory for the mode of action of the anti-CD20 antibody Rituximab. This and more can be explored in our web platform ProteomicsDB, where we added a new set of features as a companion piece to the publication: https://proteomicsdb.org/decryptM.

But instead of only reading a brief summary of what we did, feel free to just read the paper itself! https://www.science.org/stoken/author-tokens/ST-1081/full 

This study is the product of countless hours of hard work and collaboration, and we are immensely proud that it is finally out there. We'd like to thank everyone that has been involved and helped to get this over the finish line!