Proteins are the building blocks of the human body and have many critical roles. Since proteins are involved in multiple biological functions, they also play an important role in diseases. By understanding proteins better, biomedical researchers can develop new drugs. However, this requires knowing the proteome or the complete set of proteins expressed by a living being. Until recently, studying the proteome was extremely challenging.
Nautilus Biotechnology, a life sciences company that is unlocking the complexity of the proteome, announced its debut as a publicly traded company on NASDAQ
Why Does the Proteome Matter?
To understand the importance of studying the proteome, it is helpful to consider the genome. The genome is the complete set of genetic information about a living being, and the proteome is all of the proteins in the organism. However, there are some important differences between the two.
The genome is a static blueprint that stays the same from the day you are born to the day you die. On the other hand, the proteome is dynamic and changes minute to minute based on your environment, health, and nutrition. Proteins make up your cells, which is the machinery that makes your body work. This makes proteins a valuable source of biological insight.
"Today, 90% of FDA approved drugs target proteins, and most diagnostic tools target proteins," says Sujal Patel, Founder and CEO at Nautilus. "It is critical if you want to accelerate drug development and deliver precision and personalized medicine to be able to understand proteins effectively in all types of samples, like blood and cells."
Nautilus is developing a protein analysis platform with the goal to identify more than 95% of the proteome. It is bringing together computer science, engineering, and biochemistry to make the Nautilus Proteomic Analysis Platform easy to use while measuring the proteome with extreme sensitivity and scale.
"Many people do not appreciate proteins. They think of the line on their cereal box that says it has 12 grams of protein," says Parag Mallick, Founder and Chief Scientist at Nautilus. "There are tens of thousands of different types of proteins, and they each play a distinct role in how your body works."
Proteomics, the study of proteins, is going through a major transition that is similar to what happened to genomics about 15 to 20 years ago. Although researchers have been studying proteins for decades, the technologies have been far behind what is available for genomics.
"About 15 to 20 years ago, genomic technologies became incredibly powerful and profoundly democratized so that anybody could use them. But on the other side of the fence, things were still challenging for proteomics and required very specialized expertise. The technologies to study proteins used to be very limited," says Patel.
Nautilus has developed new technology that could enable measuring the entirety of the proteome, which is something that researchers were not able to do before. Nautilus also wants the technology to be easy to use and accessible to anyone in the biological community and not just the specialists or experts that had access in the past.
"What we are seeing right now is a convergence of many novel approaches coming together and making it possible to do proteomics at a scale, output, speed, and sensitivity that simply was not possible before," says Mallick. Using machine learning, the Nautilus team is working to rapidly identify all proteins in the proteome at once rather than slowly identifying proteins one by one. Critically, the team is not using machine learning after they have gathered all their data—they are using it as an integrated part in Nautilus’s screening platform.
The transition is similar to what we saw happen in the genomic space two decades ago with the emergence of next generation sequencing. Scientists had been doing genetics and sequencing for a long time, but there was a catalytic moment where everything changed because new technologies emerged.
Studying the proteome creates opportunities to have a deeper understanding of the human body and diseases. It also makes finding the right biomarkers to detect health problems or diseases possible, so drug development is faster and more effective.
Thank you to Lana Bandoim for additional research and reporting in this article. I’m the founder of SynBioBeta, and some of the companies that I write about are sponsors of the SynBioBeta conference and weekly digest.