SAN DIEGO, Nov. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Privately-held Structural GenomiX, Inc. (SGX) today announced the transfer of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Center Grant in the sum of $18.1 million received from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) ( www.nigms.nih.gov ). The NIH Grant, believed to be one of the largest protein structure research grants to date, transfers leadership of the New York Structural Genomics Research Consortium, one of nine centers in the NIGMS Protein Structure Initiative, from The Rockefeller University to SGX under the direction of Dr. Stephen K. Burley. Dr. Burley, SGX's chief scientific officer and senior vice president, joined SGX from The Rockefeller University earlier this year.
Specifically, SGX has been granted $18.1 million over three years and will be responsible for primary oversight of activities by several not-for-profit research institution collaborators, including the allocation of funding to these collaborators over the three-year period. This Grant is part of a five-year pilot program launched under the NIGMS Initiative. In the first year, SGX will retain approximately 30 percent of the grant funding with approximately 70 percent distributed to the institution collaborators.
Leading the overall research efforts under this Grant, SGX will be responsible for all gene cloning and expression, purification, and biophysical characterization of target proteins and will use its proprietary technology platform to produce proteins for crystallization and structure determination. In addition, SGX will provide access to its state-of-the-art X-ray beamline at the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory for structure determination efforts.
"We are pleased that our protein structure research efforts to date have resulted in this transfer of the NIH Grant to SGX," stated Dr. Burley. "Understanding protein structures will play an integral role in comprehending complex biological systems and developing the next generation of drug targets and therapeutics. This Grant gives SGX the unprecedented opportunity to utilize its high-speed automation technology to aid in deciphering the three- dimensional structures of proteins, thus favorably impacting both basic biomedical research and the drug discovery process."
Dr. Burley will serve as principal investigator directing an industry- academic partnership that aims to provide detailed structural information for unknown proteins. Not-for-profit participants include New York Structural Genomics Research Consortium ( www.nysgrc.org ) scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Columbia University, The Rockefeller University, and Weill Medical College of Cornell University. "We are partnering with some of the finest research institutions in the world," commented Burley.
About Structural GenomiX
Structural GenomiX, Inc. (SGX) is a drug discovery company utilizing a genomics-driven high-throughput structure-based platform to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the drug discovery process. The SGX approach identifies potent and selective drug candidates that are targeted to individual members of protein families. Proprietary SGX technologies include advanced bioinformatics, automated molecular biology and protein biochemistry, high-throughput crystallization, rapid structure determination, high- throughput compound docking and medicinal chemistry. SGX drives the lead optimization process through iterative determination of co-crystal structures that reveal, in great detail, how small molecules interact with drug targets. SGX has established unparalleled capacity in this area by building a world- class facility for the collection of macromolecular X-ray diffraction data at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), located at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory. The Company is based in San Diego, California. For more information, please visit our website at www.stromix.com .
About NIGMS
The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) primarily supports basic biomedical research that is not targeted to specific diseases or disorders. Because scientific breakthroughs often originate from such untargeted studies, NIGMS-funded work has contributed substantially to the tremendous progress that biomedical research has made in recent years. The Institute's training programs help provide the most critical element of good research: well-prepared scientists. NIGMS is one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the principal biomedical research agency of the Federal Government. NIH is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
About the NIGMS Protein Structure Initiative
The NIGMS Protein Structure Initiative has been in operation for two years, and the effort consists of two phases. In the initial pilot phase, teams of scientists across the country are hammering out workable techniques to streamline and automate the multi-step process of obtaining protein structure data. The subsequent full-scale production phase will be devoted to researchers deriving the structures as rapidly as possible -- leading to a remarkable 10,000 structures in 10 years. |
