RESOLUTE and REsolution provide new resources to empower research on human transporters
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Humans need to eat to survive. Our cells acquire nutrients from food, such as vitamins, sugars and proteins, to grow, duplicate and exert their functions. But how do these nutrients enter our cells? Solute carriers (SLCs in short) are proteins that are located on cell membranes and regulate the traffic of all kind of chemical matter. They constitute the largest family of transporters in the human genome and are associated with many diseases, including cancer and metabolic disorders. Importantly, there are a few best-selling medicines, such antidepressants or antidiabetics, that target them.
The RESOLUTE and REsolution projects, funded by Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), the European Union and EFPIA, are coordinated by CeMM and Pfizer, and involve partners from academia and the pharmaceutical industry. Their goal is to investigate this class of transporter proteins.
The projects have just given open access to new SLCs-focused tools, reagents, datasets as well as dashboards to visualize the data. These reagents are particularly useful to study SLCs in the laboratory. Given the fact that there are still many unknown aspects about solute carriers, scientists can use these resources to study what SLCs may transport, their biochemical function, or to establish methods to identify new drugs that block or activate them. Through the development and sharing of these resources with the broad scientific community, the RESOLUTE and REsolution consortia hope to enhance the understanding of SLCs and ultimately accelerate the development of medical treatments for patients in need.
Resources released by RESOLUTE and REsolution
In addition to the RESOLUTE knowledgebase and the large datasets, the projects have recently released:
| RESOLUTE reagents & tools | https://re-solute.eu/resources/reagents |
| Plasmids | Codon-optimized sequences for 446 SLCs with and without STOP codon compatible with Gateway cloning. |
| Cell lines | Collection of cell lines with specific SLCs genetically deleted by CRISPR-Cas9 or with an inducible overexpression construct inserted. Interested scientist can request them directly to contact@re-solute.eu. |
| Transport assays | SLC-focused functional assay data available via PubChem Bioassays and Zenodo. |
| RESOLUTE dashboards | https://re-solute.eu/resources/dashboards |
| Genetic score | Allows the exploration of availability and ranking of genetic evidence from different sources of individual SLCs across the whole family. |
| Transcriptomics dashboard | Interactive exploration of RNA-Seq data for more than 400 SLCs overexpressed in HEK293 Jump In T-REx cells. |
| Imaging dashboard | Visualization of immunofluorescence data for more than 400 SLCs overexpressed in HEK293 Jump In T-REx cells. |
More information on these and next releases can be found in our recently published article:
Wiedmer, T., Ingles-Prieto, A., Goldmann, U., Steppan, C., Superti-Furga, G. and RESOLUTE, REsolution Consortia. Accelerating SLC Transporter Research: Streamlining Knowledge and Validated Tools. Clin Pharmacol Ther. 2022, August 8. doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/cpt.2639
To learn more about RESOLUTE and REsolution, visit the project website and follow them on Twitter (@RESOLUTE_IMI).