Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a comprehensive atlas of protein-protein interactions across 11 different human tissues. Published in May 2025, this atlas details which proteins interact in specific tissues, offering insights that could significantly improve drug development by enabling more targeted and safer therapies.
The study, led by Diederik Laman Trip and Pedro Beltrao, analyzed proteomic data from over 7,800 human biopsies to identify tissue-specific protein interactions. The team estimates that a quarter of protein associations are tissue-specific. This specificity is crucial for understanding the distinct functions of cells in various organs and for identifying disease genes, potentially leading to drugs with fewer side effects.
The atlas, accessible via a web portal (www.ppiatlas.com), allows researchers to predict other plausible disease genes based on known disease genes and tissue-specific interaction networks. By targeting treatments to specific tissues, the likelihood of off-target effects can be reduced, resulting in more effective and safer drugs. This approach could also be used to identify differences in protein associations between healthy and diseased tissue, further enhancing drug discovery.