Carbamoyl-phosphate synthetase 2 is identified as a novel target protein of methotrexate from chemical proteomics

Using agarose-coupled methotrexate, we have successfully isolated two proteins, which have strong interactions with methotrexate. The two proteins were analyzed by Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry and identified as carbamoyl-phosphate synthetase 2 and phosphoribosylglycinamide formyltransferase, respectively. Interestingly, both of these two proteins are essential key enzymes in nucleotide biosynthetic pathways, like dihydrofolate reductase, a well-known methotrexate target. We confirmed the specificity of their interactions between methotrexate and two target proteins by the methods of competition binding assay, which were followed by western blotting using antibody against carbamoyl-phosphate synthetase 2 and phosphoribosylglycinamide formyltransferase, respectively. Moreover, we could observe that carbamoyl-phosphate synthetase 2 is overexpressed in methotrexate-resistant MOLT-3 cells comparing with control MOLT-3 cells. This result indicates that carbamoyl-phosphate synthetase 2 may be a novel target of methotrexate in cancer therapy. We propose that chemical proteomics can be a powerful technique to identify target proteins of a chemical.