Suman Shrestha

Postdoctoral Researcher

University of Toronto

Short Biography

Dr. Suman Shrestha is a protein scientist specializing in protein-protein interactions within targeted protein degradation and small molecule drug discovery. He is currently working as postdoctoral researcher at University of Toronto in Canada. Previously, he was a postdoc at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre (PMCC), Toronto, Canada. During his postdoc at PMCC, he led innovative projects including the development of ProtacID, a novel method to identify protein interactors of endogenous targets using PROTACs. He also contributed to recruiting FBXO22 to induce degradation of the histone methyltransferase and oncogene NSD2. Dr. Shrestha holds a PhD in Quantitative Biology from the University of Texas at Arlington and has published several papers advancing protein science.

Presentation Topic: Characterization of PROTAC specificity and endogenous protein interactomes using ProtacID

• We developed ProtacID, a flexible BioID (proximity-dependent biotinylation)-based approach
to identify PROTAC-proximal proteins in living cells.

• ProtacID analysis of VHL- and CRBN- recruiting PROTACs targeting a number of different proteins (localized to chromatin or cellular membranes) demonstrates how this technique can be used to validate PROTAC degradation targets and identify non-productive (i.e. nondegraded) PROTAC-interacting proteins, addressing a critical need in the field of PROTAC development.

• We also demonstrate that ProtacID can be used to characterize native, endogenous multiprotein complexes without the use of antibodies, or modification of the protein of interest with epitope tags or biotin ligase tagging.