Abstract
Affinity selection-mass spectrometry (AS-MS) is a high-throughput screening (HTS) technique for drug discovery that enables rapid screening of large collections of compounds to identify ligands for a specific biomolecular target. AS-MS is a binding assay that is insensitive to the functional effects a ligand might have, which is important because it lets us identify novel ligands irrespective of their binding site. This approach is gaining popularity, notably due to its role in the emergence of useful agents for targeted protein degradation. This Perspective highlights the use of AS-MS techniques to explore broad chemical space and identify small-molecule ligands for biological targets that have proven challenging to address with other screening paradigms. We present chemical structures of reported AS-MS hits to illustrate the potential of this screening approach to deliver high-quality hits for further optimization. AS-MS has, thus, evolved from being an infrequent alternative to traditional HTS or DNA-encoded library strategies to now firmly establishing itself as a HTS approach for drug discovery.

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Affinity Selection from Synthetic Peptide Libraries Enabled by De Novo MS/MS Sequencing
International Journal of Peptide Research and Therapeutics Open Access 03 February 2022
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The authors thank Calixar for their generous gift of purified native target to investigate the A2AR receptor.
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J.-Y.O. and D.R. are cofounders, and R.P. is an employee of Edelris SAS, which has developed the commercial AS-MS service ‘EDEN platform’.
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Prudent, R., Annis, D.A., Dandliker, P.J. et al. Exploring new targets and chemical space with affinity selection-mass spectrometry. Nat Rev Chem 5, 62–71 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-020-00229-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-020-00229-2
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