Impact | Structural Genomics Consortium

With a proven track record of fostering cross-sectorial partnerships, and pioneering initiatives that mobilize the scientific community effectively, SGC fosters a culture of collaboration and open science.

The SGC is a world leader in structural biology of human proteins and the comprehensive characterization and dissemination of chemical probes for a wide variety of human proteins, including many understudied proteins with links to disease. SGC is now working with the computational drug discovery community to generate the data needed for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to transform early drug discovery into a primarily computational approach to accelerate the discovery of new medicines.

Impact of SGC Structures

SGC expedites the drug discovery process by providing a critical first step in research and early drug development. Public domain experimental knowledge for 3D protein structures along with the instructions and toolkit for how to reproduce the experiment is a valuable piece of the early drug discovery paradigm. Together, these capabilities are used by academia and industry to advance the development of precision medicines for cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, infectious diseases, and rare diseases.

In the last two decades, SGC has determined more than 4,000 protein structures which have been deposited into public datasets.

SGC also supplies the world with important new reagents for protein-based research with over 4,450 SGC plasmids, distributed by Addgene to more than 50 countries throughout the world, and 1,500+ protocols for purification of recombinant proteins. SGC’s protein structures and related protein characterization studies have resulted in more than 1,100 peer-reviewed publications in well-respected scientific journals, and enabled dozens of drug discovery projects in academia and industry.

Impact of SGC Chemical Probes

SGC develops and disseminates new chemical probes, which are valuable experimental tools to test the disease-relevance of new drug targets. Chemical probes provide the most relevant means to evaluate, test and understand the function of new drug targets (proteins), and pharmacological inhibitors.

Often co-developed with industry, and always made available with no restrictions on use, these tools have proven to be powerful innovation catalysts.

Over the past decade, SGC has generated more than 200 chemical probes!

More than 50,000 samples of SGC-generated chemical probes have been distributed across the globe and have been used in more than 13,000 publications. Importantly, discoveries made with these chemical tools have directly inspired more than 85 clinical trials.

Due to the tacit knowledge, expertise, and relationships gained through open science collaboration, organizations that have partnered with SGC to create open-access chemical probes have proven to be the ones that have been most successful in leveraging those probe programs into clinical assets. It was one of SGC’s chemical probes (called WDR5) that laid the groundwork for Propellon’s drug discovery program.

The Donated Chemical Probes Program

In 2017 the SGC spearheaded the Donated Chemical Probes program, a freely available library fueled by generous donations of chemical probes from industry and academia, led by SGC Frankfurt. Today, the DCP library is a publicly available physical resource accompanied by comprehensive characterization data and control compounds offering researchers easy access to a growing collection of high-quality tools.

Initiatives

SGC’s strategy in the last 20 years has been to generate research tools, knowledge and data and make them publicly available, to allow their open access to seed research in the community. Over half of human genes and their encoded proteins remain poorly understudied, and the majority of human diseases and biological processes remain insufficiently understood. SGC’s mission is to increase scientific activity on these understudied genes and diseases – but can’t do it alone.

The solution is to mobilize the global research community to support this vision.

To achieve this ambitious goal and operate across geographical and sectorial boundaries, SGC has actively engaged in transformative cross-sector initiatives that address several key drug discovery challenges.

Partnerships

Our commitment to industry-standard organizational and management strategies, rigorous quality criteria for research outputs, and a robust independent evaluation system ensure the delivery of high-quality, reproducible science, and make SGC a trusted partner for cross-sectorial, open science collaborations.

SGC has a track record in mobilizing partnerships

Our funding partners comprise top-tier global pharmaceutical companies, governmental institutions, and foundations.