Identifying drug targets in tissues and whole blood with thermal-shift profiling

Monitoring drug–target interactions with methods such as the cellular thermal-shift assay (CETSA) is well established for simple cell systems but remains challenging in vivo. Here we introduce tissue thermal proteome profiling (tissue-TPP), which measures binding of small-molecule drugs to proteins in tissue samples from drug-treated animals by detecting changes in protein thermal stability using quantitative mass spectrometry. We report organ-specific, proteome-wide thermal stability maps and derive target profiles of the non-covalent histone deacetylase inhibitor panobinostat in rat liver, lung, kidney and spleen and of the B-Raf inhibitor vemurafenib in mouse testis. In addition, we devised blood-CETSA and blood-TPP and applied it to measure target and off-target engagement of panobinostat and the BET family inhibitor JQ1 directly in whole blood. Blood-TPP analysis of panobinostat confirmed its binding to known targets and also revealed thermal stabilization of the zinc-finger transcription factor ZNF512. These methods will help to elucidate the mechanisms of drug action in vivo.