Objective

Understanding both on- and off-target protein binding interactions of small molecules is an integral part of the drug discovery process. Capture Compound Mass Spectrometry (CCMS) is an unbiased, proteome-wide approach for the identification of specific binding protein targets for small molecules of interest. The technology combines medicinal chemistry and in vitro pharmacology, coupled to high resolution proteomic mass spectrometry to isolate and identify target proteins that are responsible for the observed biological response. The presentation will include an overview of CCMS technology and some of its applications: target de-convolution, identification of off-target activities and identification of targets for drug repurposing. Advantages over traditional chemoproteomic approaches such as affinity pull-down and photo-affinity labeling will be discussed. Data from a recent phenotypic target de-convolution using live cells will be disclosed to illustrate the value of CCMS.