Abstract Many biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies rely on mRNA expression as a key to finding novel oncology targets for therapeutic intervention. One of the challenges with this approach is the mismatch that can occur quite frequently between mRNA expression and protein expression and abundance. While it is established that you need mRNA for protein expression, there can be a huge mismatch mainly due to factors such as translational and transcriptional delays, post-transcriptional modifications, degradations and structural or physical alterations. These discrepancies highlight the significant limitations of relying solely on mRNA data to predict protein targets. Here we provide specific examples demonstrating how our proprietary OGAP-Verify target discovery platforms uniquely identifying targets overlooked by RNA-based predictions using a variety of protocols including RNAseq, qPCR and in situ hybridization. A prime example in the public domain is Type 1 Collagen which, while not a membrane protein, exhibits significant mismatch between low RNA levels and high protein expression. Here, we present data of proprietary membrane specific targets which have significant RNA-Protein level mismatch as examples of the effectiveness of OGAP-Verify in identifying such novel oncology targets. OGAP-Verify has enabled OBT with a unique approach to identify membrane specific protein expression on patient tumors which has resulted in identifying a large number of new specific cancer targets that do not correlate with their RNA expression profiles. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) data shows direct correlation with OGAP-Verify proteomics results. Leveraging OGAP-Verify—the world’s largest cancer membrane protein expression database—OBT has exclusive access to unique oncology targets, including cancer-specific isoforms, unavailable elsewhere in the industry. Citation Format: Belinda Cairns, Andrew Woolley, Joseph Lewis, Daniel Davies, Lindsey Hudson, Somdatta Basu, Ben Thomas, Christian Rohlff. OGAP-verify protein database can identify and highlight mRNA and protein mis-matched oncology targets abstract. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2026; Part 1 (Regular Abstracts); 2026 Apr 17-22; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2026;86(7 Suppl):Abstract nr 458.
Cairns et al. (Fri,) studied this question.