Identifying drug targets with thermal proteome profiling using IBT-16plex

Rationale: Thermal proteome profiling (TPP) has been widely used for the identification of drug targets for several years, and TMTpro-16plex has recently been evaluated for TPP of vehicle- and drug-treated samples in a single labeling process to reduce missing values and save instrument time. A novel isobaric labeling reagent, IBT-16plex, was developed with slightly better performance in protein identification and quantification than the commercially available TMTpro-16plex.

Methods: In this study, we applied the newly developed IBT-16plex for target identification of methotrexate and panobinostat using TPP.

Results: The known targets of these two drugs were successfully identified with elevated melting temperatures, and some known off-targets and potential new off-targets were also identified.

Conclusions: IBT-16plex can be a cost-effective replacement for TMTpro-16plex for TPP applications.