Thermal proteome profiling identifies new drug targets in Plasmodium falciparum parasites

Abstract

Spreading resistance to clinically used antimalarial drugs increases the need for identification of new drug targets. Here, we screened 25 antimalarials with known and unknown mode of action to validate old and find new drug targets in P. falciparum. Combining experimental approach by proteome-wide cellular thermal shift assay and computational filtering by molecular docking, we found the drugs to bind to previously known drug targets, validated ACS10 as the target of MMV665915 and discovered new drug targets. Furthermore, we updated the experimental and analytical MS-CETSA pipeline with the inclusion of membrane solubilization step, validated the targets of atovaquone and cipargamin on cell lysates and in intact cells and mapped the parasite response to these antimalarials, identifying monocarboxylate transporter MCP2 as atovaquone transporter.