SAN DIEGO, Sept. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Structural GenomiX (SGX) today announced that it has appointed Kevin D'Amico, Ph.D., as Vice President of Synchrotron Radiation Research. He is stationed at SGX's facility at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Illinois.
Pursuant to a July 2000 agreement between SGX and the Advanced Photon Source (APS), SGX is funding the construction of a dual undulator beamline facility at the APS at the Argonne National Laboratory. SGX's first beamline is an integral part of its high-throughput automated X-ray crystallography program and is on schedule for commissioning in November 2001. SGX is planning to construct two additional beamlines in the future.
``Dr. D'Amico was our first choice to head up SGX's first beamline facility as he has been instrumental in planning and developing it from its inception,'' said Tim Harris, Ph.D., SGX's President and CEO. ``Full-time access to the beamline facility at the APS will provide SGX with the best X-ray source for crystallography and accelerate our structure determination program for drug discovery. Rather than having to wait in line with others for access to beam time, SGX will soon have the ability to use its own beamline year-round in its customized, high-throughput environment.''
The APS is the nation's newest synchrotron radiation source and the only one producing X-rays from undulator devices. The beamlines will allow SGX scientists to make precise adjustments to the wavelength of the X-rays produced by the undulators and utilize advanced structure-solution methods. This increases the speed with which SGX scientists can determine protein structures, perform co-complexing experiments, and identify lead compounds. The customized facility will also include high-throughput, automated technologies for rapid data collection and interpretation. When completed and fully operational, the facility will be a state-of-the-art protein crystallography facility with the capacity for solving thousands of crystal structures annually. SGX will utilize this capability as a cornerstone of its technology platform.
SGX's facility at the APS is unique in that it is developed, funded, and constructed by SGX, without participation from outside academic or industrial partners. This will allow SGX to use the facilities as frequently and as efficiently as possible without having to share beam time with other commercial organizations. Dedicated access to the most brilliant X-rays available will allow SGX scientists to analyze smaller crystals, larger proteins, and larger protein complexes than previously attempted.
Dr. D'Amico is responsible for the design, development, and operation of the SGX beamline facilities at the APS. Prior to his current appointment with SGX, he had been working as a consultant for the Company in planning and developing the facility. With nearly 20 years of experience in synchrotron radiation research at various facilities including the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory and the National Synchrotron Light Source in New York, Dr. D'Amico has developed beamlines for the study of a wide range of research areas including those in the life sciences. Dr. D'Amico received a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. in Chemistry from Bowdoin College.
Structural GenomiX (SGX) is a leader in experimental and computational structural biology, transforming genomic information into structural templates for drug discovery. SGX technologies include advanced bioinformatics tools for target selection and structure-based functional annotation, automation of molecular biology and protein biochemistry, high-throughput crystallization, protein structure prediction by comparative modeling and ab initio methods, synthetic and computational chemistry, and rapid co-complex structure determination. SGX's programs include 3D-ID(TM), a program leveraging SGX technologies toward the discovery and design of novel anti-infectives, protein kinase and nuclear receptor structural genomics programs, and a five-year $13M strategic alliance with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation focused on membrane protein structure prediction and crystallography. SGX is headquartered in San Diego with additional locations in San Francisco and Argonne, IL.
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