Proteomics and Bioinformatics
Proteomics is the study of proteins, and an organism's proteome is its entire set of proteins. Proteins are important for drug disposition because they can facilitate the flow into and out of cells, known as transport proteins. Another important class for drug disposition is metabolizing proteins. As the name suggests, they metabolize their substrates. Understanding the function, presence, and localization of proteins is therefore crucial for understanding drug disposition. In targeted proteomics, a small subset of the proteome is measured and quantified with high accuracy. In global proteomics, the goal is to measure the entire proteome. Both targeted and global proteomics are used in our lab.
A cell's phenotype arises from its global protein expression profile. Detailed knowledge of protein expression therefore helps to understand how cells perform their various functions. We use global proteomic analysis to characterize cells and tissues that are important for the absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME) of drug molecules. These studies focus on the small intestine and liver, two of the most important organs involved in ADME, to better understand how the human body handles an administered drug product. We also routinely analyze the proteomes of our in vitro cell models to enable more relevant interpretation of experimental data.
Drug transport and metabolic processes can be easily studied in vitro. The obtained drug clearance can then be scaled to the in vivo situation using information from proteomics in the in vitro cell system and tissues. We apply this technique to scale drug clearance in various tissues, for example, using Caco-2 to scale to the intestine and hepatocytes to scale hepatic clearance in the liver.
Contact
- Visiting Address: BMC, Husargatan 3, A1:2, A2:2, A3:3, B3:3, B3:4, C2:2
- Letter and Postal Address: Box 580, SE-751 23 Uppsala