For researchers and drug developers to design and discover new therapeutics to treat diseases such as obesity, depression or even cancer, they need to be able to study and understand proteins embedded in the cell membrane. As these membrane proteins (MPs) play an essential role in regulating physiological processes, they are considered prime therapeutic targets for almost 70 % of FDA-approved drugs. The effective isolation of Membrane Proteins (MPs) can be cumbersome, making it difficult for researchers and drug developers to understand, discover and design effective therapeutics for diseases. For this technology, polymers are able to act as molecular cookie cutters, allowing for the functional and active isolation of MPs in nanoscale discs. This nanodisc technology offers the unprecedented opportunity to access some of the most valued proteins in a biologically active state, which in some cases, was an impossible task only a decade ago.
