SGC By Shawn Lawrence
ONTARIO
The Structural Genomics Consortium: Where big pharma buys into the science of sharing
In the cut-throat world of drug discovery, pharmaceutical companies are often at odds over who gets the biggest slice of the proverbial pie. But there are some who believe that competition is not always best, that there are better ways to win the drug development race. Rather than trying to get their own pieces of the action, Dr. Aled Edwards believes that if companies spent more time setting aside their differences and working together, there would be a larger pie to share. It’s with this belief in mind that he founded the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), a not-for-profit public-private partnership 12 years ago. The SGC supports the discovery of new medicines through unraveling the complexities of human biology by determining the 3D structures of human proteins of therapeutic relevance to diseases, and then using these structures to design small drug-like inhibitors of the proteins. What differentiates the SGC is that they share this knowledge, as well as the inhibitors publicly without patenting them. In fact, this knowledge and these research tools are already facilitating hundreds of drug discovery projects around the world. This was always the idea behind the SGC according to Edwards.
“By sharing information about the protein and the chemistry, the SGC is equipping drug developers with a better understanding of the diseases they are trying to treat,” he says. According to Edwards the work takes place at SGC laboratories housed within universities all around the world. The SGC has a particular focus on proteins involved in the transfer of methyl, acetyl and phosphate groups. “We provide new therapeutic hypotheses, and industry’s reaction is “I never knew we could make a drug by inhibiting that protein, thank you for that informa-
tion SGC.” That’s our job, is to open up complete new areas of drug discovery by doing what we do.” The results so far speak for themselves. Since its inception, the SGC through its collaborative network of 250 academic laboratories has determined the shapes of 15 per cent of all of the known proteins from the human genome. As it has promised to do, it has made this information available before publication and without restriction on use. It has also produced over 30 drug-like molecules to new disease targets, and the resulting knowledge has spurred more than a
(From left to right) Dr. Ronan O’Hagan, Dr. Aled Edwards, The Honourable Reza Moridi, Mr. Chirfi Guindo and Ms. Jennifer Chan. (CNW Group/Merck)
Biotechnology Focus / June/July 2015
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