Pharmaceutical scientists in Japan have used AB Sciex's TripleTOF 5600 system and Eksigent ChipLC-Nanoflex system to develop a new method for identifying proteins involved in drug interactions.
The new approach is intended to improve the success rate of anti-cancer drugs in clinical trials.
By knowing the exact amount and type of protein in a patient, researchers will be able to develop diagnostics and treatments, ultimately improving healthcare.
The team, led by Dr Tetsuya Terasaki at Tohoku University, is identifying and quantifying a much wider range of drug transporter proteins, important functional proteins (such as cytochrome P450 and UGT proteins in complex matrices) and enzymes that activate or inactivate drugs in the body.
Terasaki's research of the blood-brain barrier has paved the way for researchers to replace traditional molecular biology methods with new-generation mass spectrometry to study membrane transporter proteins.
