Dr Fangyuan Cao attended the “Ubiquitomics, Contemporary Understanding 2022” conference and won the first place poster presentation prize

This conference focused on ubiquitin/ubiquitin-like biology and ubiquitomics related technologies such as ubiquitome/ubiquitome-like analysis, activity-based protein-profiling (ABPP), and structural ubiquitomics. The conference was held at the University of Oxford towards the end of last month.

Fangyuan was selected for an oral and poster presentation. She talked about the discovery of a novel activity-based probe (ABP) IMP-2373 that targets multi-deubiquitinases (DUBs) in live cells. DUBs are proteases that hydrolyze isopeptide bonds linking ubiquitin to protein substrates, which can lead to reduced substrate degradation through the ubiquitin proteasome system. Deregulation of DUB activity has been implicated in many disease states, including cancer, neurodegeneration and inflammation, thereby making them potentially attractive targets for therapeutic intervention.

 The >100 known DUB enzymes have been classified primarily by their conserved active sites, but we are still building our understanding of their substrate profiles, localization and regulation of DUB activity in diverse contexts. By applying IMP-2373 in cells, we could better understand the DUB activity in disease-relevant system and profile the DUB inhibitor activity and selectivity.

 Congratulations, Dr Cao!