STPP-UP: An alternative method for drug target identification using protein thermal stability

Thermal proteome profiling (TPP) has significantly advanced the field of drug discovery by facilitating proteome-wide identification of drug targets and off-targets. However, TPP has not been widely applied for high-throughput drug screenings, since the method is labor intensive and requires a lot of measurement time on a mass spectrometer. Here, we present Single-tube TPP with Uniform Progression (STPP-UP), which significantly reduces both the amount of required input material and measurement time, while retaining the ability to identify drug targets for compounds of interest. By using incremental heating of a single sample, changes in protein thermal stability across a range of temperatures can be assessed, while alleviating the need to measure multiple samples heated to different temperatures. We demonstrate that STPP-UP is able to identify the direct interactors for anticancer drugs in both human and mice cells. In summary, the STPP-UP methodology represents a useful tool to advance drug discovery and drug repurposing efforts.