THRON-SEC: Drug-Induced Secretome Profiling for Enhanced Therapy

Under normal conditions, cells release proteins (secretome) to regulate fundamental processes like metabolism and immunity.

Many diseases and their corresponding treatments involve alterations in the secretome and the cellular microenvironment.

Understanding drug-induced changes in the secretome is vital for early assessment of drug efficacy, toxicity, and resistance development.

We have developed a metabolic protein labeling technique based on bioorthogonal threonine analogues, THRONCAT, that offers sensitive and non-perturbing analysis of drug-induced changes in the cellular secretome.

THRONCAT enables the identification and quantification of secreted proteins in response to drug treatment, even in sensitive cellular systems.

We envision that Drug-Induced Secretome Profiling (DISP), holds promise for improving clinical and preclinical drug development by detecting specific signaling proteins and biomarkers early in the development process and validated secreted proteins may serve as biomarkers to assess treatment efficacy during drug development and clinical trials.

In this proof of concept proposal we will validate the technical and commercial feasibility of a platform that allows the analysis of the cellular secretome upon drug treatment.

THRON-SEC will: 1) Show that secretome profiling upon drug treatment allows the elucidation of a drugs efficacy and mechanism of action as well as early detection of toxicity and resistance markers; and 2) Perform IPR, market and business case analyses to ensure commercial feasibility and entry to market.