The Consortium for Top-Down Proteomics Launches a New Initiative to Develop the Human Proteoform Atlas

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 29, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Consortium for Top-Down Proteomics has launched a new Initiative to build the Human Proteoform Atlas, the definitive set of unique proteoforms capturing the diversity of proteins resulting from combinations of genetic polymorphisms, RNA splice variants, and post-translational modifications. This proteoform-specific information is critical to understanding the mechanisms of disease and to accelerate the development of more precise diagnostics and potential therapeutic agents.

The Initiative is being chaired by Prof. Hartmut Schlüter of the Institute of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, Section Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf and by Prof. Neil Kelleher of the Dept. of Molecular Biosciences, the Feinberg School of Medicine, and Director of the Chemistry of Life Processes Institute at Northwestern University.

The Initiative will craft standardized representations, identifiers, and nomenclature to enable the facile sharing of data and information. The Atlas will be designed to interact with other important repositories and databases, and will benefit from broad community input that will be provided by the working groups in the Initiative. There is currently an alpha version of the Atlas, available at humanproteoformatlas.org.

About the Consortium for Top-Down Proteomics

The Consortium for Top-Down Proteomics is a 501c3 non-profit organization fostering collaboration, education, and innovative research to accelerate the comprehensive analysis of all human proteoforms, speeding developments in the fields of therapeutics, diagnostics, environment, and energy. It has members from academic institutions, corporations, and government agencies worldwide, and its work is supported by sponsorships from Thermo Fisher Scientific, Bruker, SCIEX, Pfizer and Agilent.