“There’s no escape”: tagging system allows scientists to shine new light on proteins

BromoCatch is a next‑generation covalent protein tagging platform designed to overcome key limitations of widely used SLP systems, including large tag size and slower reaction kinetics. By addressing these challenges, BromoCatch enables efficient tagging of a broader range of proteins, including smaller or more sensitive targets whose function may be disrupted by existing technologies. 

The findings have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Professor Alessio Ciulli, Director of Dundee’s Centre for Targeted Protein Degradation (CeTPD) and corresponding author of the paper, said, "We created a new self-labelling tag that is small, highly selective, and genuinely orthogonal to existing tag systems. This is something researchers can deploy alongside other systems to simultaneously track or pair multiple proteins in the same cell.

"We are excited by the breadth of applications BromoCatch opens up, including helping researchers to develop new treatments for a range of illnesses.

“This is a significant leap forward in our ability to track disease causing proteins. There is no escape for them now.”

Proteins are the fundamental molecular machines of life. Cells are composed of thousands of interacting proteins, and their malfunction is a primary driver of disease. Understanding how individual proteins behave inside living cells — where they go, what they interact with, and how their levels change over time — is critical both for basic biological research and for developing new medicines and is currently done so using “tagging” systems.

Current tagging methods are standard in laboratories around the world but are limited in the ability to follow multiple proteins at one time. BromoCatch has evolved from CeTPD’s BromoTag technology with the tag forming a permanent, irreversible bond with a tailored-designed small-molecule, allowing its behaviour and movements to be tracked in precise detail, both individually and with numerous others.

Will Geist, President of Bio-Techne’s Protein Sciences Segment said “BromoCatch represents the kind of innovation that emerges when deep biological insight is paired with enabling technology development. By helping overcome key limitations of existing protein tagging systems, this platform expands what researchers can study and how quickly they can translate discoveries into meaningful insights. We are proud of our ongoing collaboration with the University of Dundee on this work and to play a role in making this powerful technology broadly accessible to the scientific community.”

Maria Rodriguez-Rios, CeTPD researcher and lead author of the research, said, "This has been a genuinely exciting project to work on. 

"Designing a library of electrophilic ligands from scratch, screening them systematically, and then seeing the whole system come together in live-cell imaging experiments has been deeply satisfying."

Conner Craigon, fellow CeTPD researcher, added, "Labelling two different proteins in two different colours without any crosstalk, was a real highlight. 

“It shows the potential for multiplexed experiments that just weren't possible before with this combination of tools."

BromoCatch technology is exclusive to R&D Systems by Bio‑Techne ™. It strengthens the company’s portfolio of innovative protein biology and drug discovery tools, supporting its strategic focus on enabling next‑generation research workflows for academic and biopharma scientists. 

The full findings are detailed in the journal Nature Communications.