Empowered Patient Podcast Platform Using Proteome Wide Screening Unlocks Opportunities to Target Hard-to-Drug Proteins with Dr. Ping Cao BridGene Biosciences
Dr. Ping Cao, Co-Founder and CEO of BridGene Biosciences, has developed IMTAC, a platform that can identify molecule ligands for hard-to-drug targets. This platform allows for proteome-wide screening for drug candidates from a small molecule library and has identified over 4,000 protein targets providing numerous opportunities for drug development. The lead candidate, BGI-9004, is a TEAD inhibitor of multiple cancers. BridGene is also in partnership with Takeda to focus on neurodegenerative disorders.
Ping explains, "For small molecule discovery, the major challenge right now is the limited druggable space. Human proteome consists of over 20,000 proteins, and approximately 12,000 of them have been confirmed to play a role in human diseases and may become targets for precision therapy."
"However, statistics analysis shows drugs so far approved by the FDA only target less than 10% of proteins. In other words, most potential drug targets within human proteome do not have associated drugs. Those targets are called hard-to-drug targets due to their biological or structural characteristics. Also, there is less understanding of their mechanism, making them undruggable using traditional methods."
"The significance of proteome-wide screening is that it addresses two kinds of major challenges of drug discovery. One is that some protein drugs contain shadow-binding pockets. The second one is some protein drugs only form transient and temporary binding pockets in live cell environments. For these two types of drugs, by using the chemical proteome approach, we can identify ligands. The process is basically like BridGene's process called IMTAC. They consist of three main components."
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