Mass Spectrometry (MS/MS) and Proteomics: A High-Performance Bioanalytical Technique for the Peptide Drug Discovery

Abstract

Drug discovery research focuses on the Rational Drug Design (RDD) concepts, and the major obstacles in the drug discovery process are the lack of target specificity and selectivity. The realization of higher target selectivity of peptide drugs has promoted peptide research. Rapid growth in genomics along with recombinant DNA (rDNA) technology and gene expression studies stimulated the peptide research. The promising use of peptide therapeutics demands sensitive and selective quantification methods. Protein sequencing and proteomic investigations can be successfully accomplished through the Mass Spectroscopy (MS) based methods. Mass spectroscopy-based soft ionization methods, namely, electrospray ionization (ESI) and Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization (MALDI), offer high-throughput sequencing to provide the characterization (sequence and structure) of intact proteins/peptides. The advent of tandem Mass Spectrometry (MS/MS) along with data acquisition methods are the basis for the evolution of peptide therapeutics research. The evolution of data science helped in developing computational proteomics, which assists in the quantitative determination of protein samples. This review narrates the role of mass spectrometry in the peptide drug discovery particularly in the sequence characterization along with the latest developments, such as computational proteomics.