Structural Genomics Consortium

The Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) is a public-private-partnership focusing on elucidating the functions and disease relevance of all proteins encoded by the human genome, with an emphasis on those that are relatively understudied.[1][2][3] The SGC places all its research output into the public domain without restriction and does not file for patents and continues to promote open science.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] Two recent publications revisit the case for open science.[15][16] Founded in 2003, and modelled after the Single Nucleotide Polymorphism Database (dbSNP) Consortium, the SGC is a charitable company whose Members comprise organizations that contribute over $5,4M Euros to the SGC over a five-year period. The Board has one representative from each Member and an independent Chair, who serves one 5-year term. The current Chair is Anke Müller-Fahrnow (Germany), and previous Chairs have been Michael Morgan (U.K.), Wayne Hendrickson (U.S.A.), Markus Gruetter (Switzerland) and Tetsuyuki Maruyama (Japan). The founding and current CEO is Aled Edwards (Canada). The founding Members of the SGC Company were the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Genome Canada, the Ontario Research Fund, GlaxoSmithKline and Wellcome Trust. The current (March 2022) Members comprise Bayer Pharma AG, Bristol Myers Squibb, Boehringer Ingelheim, the Eshelman Institute for Innovation, Genentech, Genome Canada, Janssen, Merck KGaA, Pfizer, and Takeda.

SGC research activities take place in a coordinated network of university-affiliated laboratories – at Goethe University Frankfurt, Karolinska Institutet, McGill University, and the Universities of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Toronto. The research activities are supported both by funds from the SGC Company as well as by grants secured by the scientists affiliated with the SGC programs. At each university, the scientific teams are led by a Chief Scientist, who are Stefan Knapp (Goethe University Frankfurt), Michael Sundstrom (Karolinska Institutet), Ted Fon (McGill University), Tim Willson (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), and Cheryl Arrowsmith (University of Toronto). The SGC currently comprises ~200 scientists.

  1. ^ Williamson, AR (2000). "Creating a structural genomics consortium". Nature Structural Biology. 7: 953. doi:10.1038/80726. PMID 11103997. S2CID 35185565.
  2. ^ Edwards, AM; et, al. (2011). "Too many roads not taken". Nature. 470 (2333): 163–165. arXiv:1102.0448. Bibcode:2011Natur.470..163E. doi:10.1038/470163a. PMID 21307913. S2CID 4429387.
  3. ^ Davis, Andrew M.; Engkvist, Ola; Fairclough, Rebecca J.; Feierberg, Isabella; Freeman, Adrian; Iyer, Preeti (2021-02-13). "Public-Private Partnerships: Compound and Data Sharing in Drug Discovery and Development". SLAS Discovery. 26 (5): 604–619. doi:10.1177/2472555220982268. ISSN 2472-5552. PMID 33586501. S2CID 231928371.
  4. ^ Edwards, Aled (September 2008). "Open-source science to enable drug discovery". Drug Discovery Today. 13 (17–18): 731–733. doi:10.1016/j.drudis.2008.04.011. ISSN 1359-6446. PMID 18790412.
  5. ^ Edwards, Aled M.; Bountra, Chas; Kerr, David J.; Willson, Timothy M. (July 2009). "Open access chemical and clinical probes to support drug discovery". Nature Chemical Biology. 5 (7): 436–440. doi:10.1038/nchembio0709-436. ISSN 1552-4469. PMID 19536100.
  6. ^ Masum, Hassan; Rao, Aarthi; Good, Benjamin M.; Todd, Matthew H.; Edwards, Aled M.; Chan, Leslie; Bunin, Barry A.; Su, Andrew I.; Thomas, Zakir; Bourne, Philip E. (2013). "Ten simple rules for cultivating open science and collaborative R&D". PLOS Computational Biology. 9 (9): e1003244. Bibcode:2013PLSCB...9E3244M. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003244. ISSN 1553-7358. PMC 3784487. PMID 24086123.
  7. ^ Morgan, Maxwell Robert; Roberts, Owen Gwilym; Edwards, Aled Morgan (2018). "Ideation and implementation of an open science drug discovery business model - M4K Pharma". Wellcome Open Research. 3: 154. doi:10.12688/wellcomeopenres.14947.1. ISSN 2398-502X. PMC 6346698. PMID 30705971.
  8. ^ Harding, Rachel J. (January 2019). "Open notebook science can maximize impact for rare disease projects". PLOS Biology. 17 (1): e3000120. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.3000120. ISSN 1545-7885. PMC 6366684. PMID 30689629.
  9. ^ Schapira, Matthieu; Harding, Rachel J. (2019-04-02). "Open laboratory notebooks: good for science, good for society, good for scientists". F1000Research. 8: 87. doi:10.12688/f1000research.17710.2. ISSN 2046-1402. PMC 6694453. PMID 31448096.
  10. ^ Müller, Susanne; Ackloo, Suzanne; Arrowsmith, Cheryl H.; Bauser, Marcus; Baryza, Jeremy L.; Blagg, Julian; Böttcher, Jark; Bountra, Chas; Brown, Peter J.; Bunnage, Mark E.; Carter, Adrian J. (20 April 2018). "Donated chemical probes for open science". eLife. 7. doi:10.7554/eLife.34311. ISSN 2050-084X. PMC 5910019. PMID 29676732.
  11. ^ Drewry, David H.; Wells, Carrow I.; Zuercher, William J.; Willson, Timothy M. (June 2019). "A Perspective on Extreme Open Science: Companies Sharing Compounds without Restriction". SLAS Discovery. 24 (5): 505–514. doi:10.1177/2472555219838210. ISSN 2472-5560. PMC 6624833. PMID 31034310.
  12. ^ Wells, Carrow I.; Al-Ali, Hassan; Andrews, David M.; Asquith, Christopher R. M.; Axtman, Alison D.; Dikic, Ivan; Ebner, Daniel; Ettmayer, Peter; Fischer, Christian; Frederiksen, Mathias; Futrell, Robert E. (2021-01-08). "The Kinase Chemogenomic Set (KCGS): An Open Science Resource for Kinase Vulnerability Identification". International Journal of Molecular Sciences. 22 (2): 566. doi:10.3390/ijms22020566. ISSN 1422-0067. PMC 7826789. PMID 33429995.
  13. ^ Laflamme, Carl; McKeever, Paul M.; Kumar, Rahul; Schwartz, Julie; Kolahdouzan, Mahshad; Chen, Carol X.; You, Zhipeng; Benaliouad, Faiza; Gileadi, Opher; McBride, Heidi M.; Durcan, Thomas M. (15 October 2019). "Implementation of an antibody characterization procedure and application to the major ALS/FTD disease gene C9ORF72". eLife. 8. doi:10.7554/eLife.48363. ISSN 2050-084X. PMC 6794092. PMID 31612854.
  14. ^ Ensan, Deeba; Smil, David; Zepeda-Velázquez, Carlos A.; Panagopoulos, Dimitrios; Wong, Jong Fu; Williams, Eleanor P.; Adamson, Roslin; Bullock, Alex N.; Kiyota, Taira; Aman, Ahmed; Roberts, Owen G. (2020-05-14). "Targeting ALK2: An Open Science Approach to Developing Therapeutics for the Treatment of Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma". Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. 63 (9): 4978–4996. doi:10.1021/acs.jmedchem.0c00395. ISSN 1520-4804. PMC 8213057. PMID 32369358.
  15. ^ Gold, E. Richard (June 2021). "The fall of the innovation empire and its possible rise through open science". Research Policy. 50 (5): 104226. doi:10.1016/j.respol.2021.104226. PMC 8024784. PMID 34083844.
  16. ^ Jones, Molly Morgan; Chataway, Joanna (2021-03-04). "The Structural Genomics Consortium: successful organisational technology experiment or new institutional infrastructure for health research?". Technology Analysis & Strategic Management. 33 (3): 296–306. doi:10.1080/09537325.2021.1882673. ISSN 0953-7325. S2CID 232245414.