The study generated more than one million dose-response curves for existing anticancer drugs.
Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have now managed to map the interactions between more than 100 active ingredients and around 8,000 proteins in order to identify previously unknown effects of existing medicines.
Publication Nature Biotechnology, The researchers have generated over one million dose-response curves that demonstrate the mechanisms behind the effects of active substances during the treatment process.
Precision medicine is designed to use genetic or molecular profiling to optimize the efficiency or effectiveness of treatment for specific patient groups, providing patients with the most individualized care possible.
To achieve this, we need to understand exactly what is happening at the cellular level.
The researchers treated the cells with various doses of 144 active substances, most of which are already in use or are in the clinical approval stage for cancer treatment. After extraction, the team analyzed the proteins using mass spectrometry and used the data to study cellular responses.
Very different things happen at the molecular level in different types of cancer, and a detailed understanding of these processes can help choose appropriate treatments and provide insight into the development of new drugs.
Using this data and a technique called decryptE, the researchers were able to demonstrate that the immune system could be weakened by a class of drugs called histone deacetylase inhibitors, which could have implications for treating tumors that exploit the immune system.
decryptE records everything that happens, generating a huge amount of data for researchers to analyze using digital methods.
The researchers hope that their findings will shed new light on previously undiscovered effects of a commonly used drug.
Bernhard Küster, professor of proteomics and bioanalysis at TUM’s School of Life Sciences, commented: “Many drugs have more effects than we think they do… We believe that many widely used drugs also have effects that we are not yet aware of.”
“One of the goals of our research is to look for such discoveries systematically rather than waiting for them to happen by chance.”
