The Science of Sharing

Structural Genomics Consortium A public-private partnership that offers “OPEN ACCESS SHARING”

Dr. Aled Edwards

The Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), led by Dr. Aled Edwards, has been around since 2002, but the kind of partnerships it drives feels new, even by today’s standards. Based at the University of Toronto with partners at the University of Oxford in the U.K., the SGC is funded through the Ontario Government’s Ministry of Research Innovation and private biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, but the results of the consortium’s research is open and freely available; there are no patents.

At the SGC, academic and industry scientists are able to overcome their differences and work together to determine the three-dimensional structures of human proteins and provide other valuable reagents to unravel the complexities of human biology.

Edwards explained that in the late 1990’s as the human genome was being sequenced, it was becoming quickly apparent that the value of that information would be far greater if it was freely available for everyone to use rather than patented and sequestered in a company. It was a new paradigm to be sure.

Edwards said it was prescient because, although often one hears that it’s impossible to commercialize without protection, a recent study of thousands of genes, some patented and protected, and some not (http://www. nber.org/papers/w16213) showed that the genes that were not patented led to many more commercial products than did patented ones.

Edwards takes a similar view of the proteins in the human genome. In 1998, Ontario supported the first research in this area in the labs of Edwards and Cheryl Arrowsmith. From this effort grew the SGC, which was formed to make human protein structures available without patents and without restrictions on use. The funding for the SGC comes from the Ontario government, Genome Canada and the CIHR, the research charity the Wellcome Trust, the Swedish government, and the pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and Novartis.

“We now are responsible, just the SGC labs, for one third of the world’s activity in human protein structure determination,” Edwards said.

The team that was originally slated to determine the structure for just over 350 proteins accomplished that goal in no time, instead completing 450. Over the last four years the team was tasked with completing an additional 660 proteins and they’ve accomplished that goal too.

“We make our reputation on hitting our milestones,” Edwards said. “That’s one of the reasons industry likes to work with us.”

Edwards praises the Ontario government for supporting the SGC. He said the reason for the praise is because of the SGC has an unusual funding model (partnering with private pharma) that requires government funders to be innovative.

“This could not have happened in the United States”, Edwards said. Ontario along with the CIHR and Genome Canada have been leaders in pushing the consortium forward.

For Edwards, Ontario and especially the city of Toronto was perfectly positioned to spur this kind of organization with international collaboration. He said the collaborative society and multicultural setting of the province really give it an advantage.

The partnerships with private pharmaceutical companies have also helped. Edwards explained that each time the team has extended the consortium they’ve received double the amount of funding from pharma, in millions of

for edwards, ontario and especially the city of toronto was perfectly positioned to spur this kind of organization with international collaboration. He said the collaborative society and multicultural setting of the province really give it an advantage.

dollars of cash. “There’s very few deals that large,” Edwards said. “Especially because these companies don’t own anything.”

“They don’t get proprietary knowledge - this isn’t a deal where they’re buying knowledge to own it - this is a deal where they’re contributing to this open access effort in order that this information becomes free.”

This is really a new way of business in the bioeconomy that is being carved out by Ontario, according to Edwards.

“We’re forever trying to be like Boston or like San Francisco, and by the time you think you’ve caught up, they’ve moved ahead and you’re still playing catch-up,” he said. “The open access model is a true case for Ontario creating a new way of doing business - not just doing business - but a new model.”

The business model of the consortium is innovative but so is the research. Through protein research, the SGC is driving recognition for many rare diseases.

“Because we’re open access and are not driven by commercial needs, we can follow the science where necessary,” said Edwards. “And, over the last seven years we’ve been probably working on 200 proteins linked to rare diseases.”

The SGC is also working with organizations like the Canadian Gene Cure Foundation and others in the U.S. to help drive progress in these areas.

“ We’re starting to work and interact with the associations that are interested with genetic diseases both in Canada and the United States - to use what we’ve done to create research tools that can enable the world to understand why and how these diseases work - so we can get to a cure faster. Those discussions are just starting now and we’re really quite excited about them.”

The innovation in the field of rare diseases is exciting because of the existing partnerships with pharma. Rare diseases pose an unfortunate problem for many commercially oriented companies: there are often not enough people with the disease to make it profitable to create drugs or tools to combat the condition.

“I think that companies are intrigued with the possibility of working on these proteins. Of course, many people in the companies are passionate about helping patients. But in many of these diseases you don’t really know how to help. So, the more knowledge you have about these diseases and the mechanisms through which they work, the greater the chances of finding a strategy to generate a cure. And, the pharmaceutical companies would be delighted to participate in that - I’m confident.”

The SGC model is unique and through its efforts the team has also helped to found two companies: 1DegreeBio and Harbinger Biotechnology and Engineering Corporation. Edwards said the group is in the process of recruiting a world-leading CRO to set-up a research hub in Toronto. “And we see many other commercial opportunities…” he said.

“I firmly believe that in early stage drug discovery there’s going to be more opportunities for commercialization out of these open projects - and that we should be leaders in exploiting that in Ontario. It’s a big opportunity for us to make an impact in the precompetitive world in which you get industry funding up-front to do your science and then you build businesses off the knowledge and skills, not off patents.”

Edwards said they’re also discussing other pre-competitive collaboration projects in areas such as parasitology - aiming to drive global collaboration among basic scientists and pharmaceutical companies to reduce duplication of effort in the area (for diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis). The team is also replicating the model in epigenetics. Edwards said that ultimately he thinks the real paradigm shift would occur by moving the precompetitive boundary for novel science to proof-of-concept clinical trials.