Proteomic chemistry

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Proteomic chemistry is the large-scale, systematic study of the interaction of small chemicals with biological macromolecules, typically disease-relevant drug target proteins from humans and other organisms. It is a scientific discipline which is central to current pharmaceutical drug discovery. Proteomic chemistry is at the interface of the chemical and biological universe integrating molecular biology, cell biology, structural biology, biochemistry, medicinal chemistry, bioinformatics and cheminformatics. Drug targets are studied as pure components in vitro or as part of their physiological environment in a cell. Proteomic chemistry includes both the study of a very large number of low molecular weight compounds against a single biological drug target (high-throughput screening, lead finding) or the study of a single compound against many different targets within or across different protein families (selectivity or safety profiling). Screening as well as profiling require a high degree of automation and a substantial infrastructure of assay and information technologies.