Poster Presentation 11th Annual Conference of the International Chemical Biology Society 2022

Target 2035 - a global, open science initiative that aims to develop pharmacological modulators for each human protein (#120)

Kristina Edfeldt 1 , Suzanne Ackloo 2 , Albert A. Antolin 3 , Cheryl Arrowsmith 2 , Shaunna Beedie 4 , Peter J. Brown 5 , Alisa Crisp 6 , Aled Edwards 2 , Ursula Egner 7 , Claudia Gordijo 2 , Anke Mueller-Fahrnow 7 , Matthieu Schapira 2 , Claudia Tredup 8 , Matthew H. Todd 9
  1. Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
  2. Structural Genomics Consortium, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
  3. Catalan Institute of Oncology and Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute, Barcelona, Spain
  4. University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
  5. University North Carolina, Chapel Hill, United States
  6. The Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK
  7. Nuvisan ICB GmbH, Berlin, Germany
  8. Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
  9. University College London, London, United Kingdom

The challenge of translating the wealth of new knowledge from genomics into new medicines is that proteins and not genes, are the primary executers of biological function. Therefore, much of how biology works in health and disease must be understood through the protein function lens. In this context, a subset of human proteins has been at the heart of research interests of millions of scientists over the centuries, and we have accumulated varying degrees of knowledge about approximately 65% of the human proteome1. However, a large proportion of proteins in the human proteome (~35%) remains uncharacterized2-4. Furthermore, less than 5% of the human proteome has been successfully targeted for drug discovery1 highlighting the profound disconnect between the ease of obtaining genetic information and developing effective medicines. 

The Target 2035 concept arose from discussions among scientists at the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) and like-minded colleagues in industry, government and academia, who recognised the slow pace of progress toward understanding and exploiting the large proportion of proteins in the human proteome (aka the ‘Dark Proteome’) despite their suspected role in disease states. This large untapped reservoir may provide new targets to address unmet medical needs. We recognised the lack of tools to study protein function as the main obstacle to progress in this area. Therefore, Target 2035 has been launched, as an ambitious open science initiative to discover and make available chemogenomic libraries, chemical probes, and/or functional antibodies for nearly all human proteins by the year 2035.

  1. T. I. Oprea et al., Nat. Rev. Drug Discovery, 2018, 17, 377.
  2. A. J. Carter et al., Drug Discovery Today, 2019, 24 , 2111-2115.
  3. M. E. Berginski et al., Nucleic Acids Res., 2021, 49 , D529-D535.
  4. T. Sheils et al., Curr. Protoc. Bioinf., 2020, 69 , e92.