Mass spectrometry-based strategies for membrane protein pharmacology

Membrane proteins are essential for cellular physiology and the target of half of all FDA-approved drugs. However, their hydrophobicity and low abundance make large-scale expression and purification difficult, posing a challenge for drug discovery. Despite these problems, mass spectrometry (MS) has enabled workflows for higher-throughput ligand screening, simplified identification of membrane protein targets and ligandable sites, and direct analysis of drug binding in native environments. In this review, we highlight emerging MS-based strategies, adapted workflows, and novel technological advances in different MS-based fields, including affinity selection, probe-based and probe-free chemoproteomics, and native MS that collectively expand our ability to interrogate membrane proteins for drug discovery, target deconvolution, and mechanistic characterization.