Development of Novel Target Deconvolution Methods to Assist Phenotypic Drug Discovery

Chemical probes play an important role for the understanding of biological systems and validation of protein targets. In target deconvolution, chemical probes are often used to understand the mechanism of an active compound and its effect on the protein target. Degrader molecules are known for their ability to target “undruggable” proteins, and utilising them as probes was hypothesised to assist in expanding the scope of proteins for future studies. In this project, novel degrader probes were developed and synthesised for application in chemoproteomics assisted target deconvolution. Together with the advancement of tandem mass spectroscopy, the synergy of both technologies was shown in the project to contribute in the area of chemoproteomics.