XProteome Launches with AI-Powered Protein Corona Platform for Disease Detection

By Bio-IT World Staff 

August 5, 2025 | A new biotech company launched last month with a novel approach to protein discovery that could transform how researchers identify biomarkers and develop treatments for cardiovascular disease, cancer, and neurodegenerative conditions. XProteome, founded by Michigan State University researcher Morteza Mahmoudi, has developed an integrated platform that combines nanomedicine, artificial intelligence, and causality analysis to pinpoint disease-causing proteins with unprecedented precision. 

The company's proof-of-concept study, published in Chemical Engineering Journal, successfully identified two proteins—CCT7 and TBXAS1—as potential biomarkers for metastatic prostate cancer and atherosclerosis. Notably, a separate UK study published days later in Nature confirmed that aspirin could help prevent cancer metastasis by acting against TBXAS1, validating the platform's predictive capabilities. 

Protein Corona Technology 

XProteome's core innovation leverages the "protein corona"—the layer of surface-bound proteins that forms around nanoparticles in biological fluids. This protein coating gives nanoparticles their distinctive biological identity and has been a major obstacle in nanomedicine for nearly two decades. 

"How cells respond to nanoparticles depends on the decoration of that protein corona in terms of the conformation, and the amount and type of proteins," explained Mahmoudi, who first introduced the concept of personalized protein coronas over a decade ago. His team discovered that identical nanoparticles create different protein coronas when exposed to plasma from different patients and diseases, revealing disease-specific protein signatures. 

The platform addresses a fundamental challenge in proteomics research: the inability of mass spectrometry to detect low-abundance proteins that often hold the key to disease mechanisms. These rare proteins represent only about 1% of total protein mass but are frequently the most biologically significant. 

Traditional mass spectrometry struggles with the overwhelming presence of highly abundant proteins in plasma samples. However, protein coronas show "limited affinity to high-abundance proteins" compared to low-abundance proteins, effectively serving as an enrichment tool that improves detection depth. Depending on the chemical properties of the nanoparticles, the abundant proteins claim perhaps 5%, 10%, or 20% of the overall protein layer, giving the low-abundance proteins a new opportunity to be detected, Mahmoudi noted. 

Commercial Strategy 

XProteome's business model focuses on "significantly reducing the cost of clinical trials and drug design and accelerating the development of diagnostic techniques and drugs so patients can get the benefit of those things as early and as cheaply as possible," according to Mahmoudi. 

The platform's ability to identify true causal relationships rather than mere correlations could revolutionize how pharmaceutical companies approach target identification and validation, potentially reducing the high failure rates in drug development. 

With its validated proof-of-concept results and expanding clinical studies, XProteome represents a new approach to protein-based drug discovery that could accelerate the development of precision medicine across multiple therapeutic areas. 

For complete technical details and clinical study results, read the full article on Diagnostics World.