Tasca: Drugging lipid pockets on cancer drivers

Tasca is leveraging stealth lipid tags to gain druggable footholds on cancer proteins — and steer them to new cellular locations. The strategy begins by mapping which cancer-driving proteins self-install these lipid marks.

Tasca Therapeutics Corp. uses mass spectrometry-based proteomics to find proteins that “self-palmitoylate,” a post-translational modification in which a fatty acid (palmitate) attaches to the protein without help from the usual palmitoyl transferase enzymes. Instead, the proteins contain their own catalytic pocket that drives attachment of palmitate to cysteine residues. That lipid tag can shape where the protein traffics, how it associates with membranes, and what signaling it drives...