Accelerating inhibitor discovery for deubiquitinating enzymes

Deubiquitinases (DUBs) are key signaling enzymes, many of which lack selective inhibitors. Chan et al. pair a DUB-focused covalent library to mass spectrometry activity-based protein profiling, leading to selective hits against 23 endogenous DUBs and a first-in-class VCPIP1 probe with nanomolar potency.