Unravelling the structure of hundreds of human proteins will be the goal of an ambitious $95 million partnership that brings together British and Canadian health researchers under the direction of an internationally renowned Canadian scientist.
The Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) is a three-year initiative led by Canadian scientist Dr. Aled Edwards, a world-leading expert in proteomics and structural genomics research and a University of Toronto professor at the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research. It is the first consortium of its kind, focusing its efforts on determining the three-dimensional structure of more than 350 human proteins. One of the consortium’s objectives is to encourage the development of new and improved drugs and other healthcare benefits. It represents the first funding partnership among the U.K.-based research charity the Wellcome Trust, four Canadian research funding organizations (Ontario government’s Ontario Research and Development Challenge Fund and the Ontario Innovation Trust, Genome Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research) and the global pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline.
Established as a charity, the consortium will operate from research laboratories at the University of Toronto and the University of Oxford. The proteins identified for study by the SGC will have significant relevance to human health and include proteins associated with cancer, neurological disorders and infectious diseases like malaria. Information gleaned from the project will provide insight into the proteins’ functions and their role in safeguarding health or increasing susceptibility to disease. The aim of the SGC is to produce the first protein structures by the end of 2003; all protein structures will be released freely into the public domain.