Donate Your Purified Proteins to Accelerate Open Data in Drug Discovery
Donate your favourite purified protein for chemical screening and receive small molecule hit information in return. Your contribution will support the creation of a comprehensive, open protein-ligand interaction dataset, driving forward computational drug discovery.
As part of the Target 2035 initiative, the SGC and its partners are leading a transformative effort to revolutionize small molecule hit discovery. Over the next five years, we will develop large, openly accessible datasets of high-quality protein-small molecule binding data. This effort will leverage advanced technologies like Affinity Selection Mass Spectrometry (AS-MS) and DNA-encoded chemical libraries (DEL) to screen 2,000 human proteins. The resulting data will be shared openly, challenging the machine learning community to predict new, diverse small molecule binders. This initiative aligns with our broader open data strategy, which seeks to make small molecule drug discovery more data-driven and accessible.
What We Need From You
To advance “hit-finding” algorithms, we need high-quality protein samples. While the SGC has ready access to approximately 1,000 human proteins, we seek contributions from the community to expand this number.
We invite you to share the proteins your team has developed for AS-MS/DEL screening. With ~60 nmol, your protein (~2 mg for a 30 kDa protein) will be screened using industry-standard protocols. The data generated from your protein will be combined with other datasets to create a large, publicly available resource. All data will be made available through AIRCHECK, our rapidly growing, cloud-based Artificial Intelligence-Ready CHEmiCal Knowledge base, ensuring that this valuable resource is accessible to the global scientific community. Any binders confirmed through secondary biophysical assays will be provided to you without restriction, supporting your research and aligning with our commitment to open data and AI-driven drug discovery.
To get started, please download and complete our form, and then send it to us at proteins@thesgc.com.
Collaboration Opportunities
While the default arrangement ensures that “hits” are returned to the donating scientist and the screening data is placed into the public domain after quality checks, we offer three optional collaboration opportunities:
- Benchmarking Challenge Participation: Opt-in to allow your data to be used in benchmarking challenges (e.g., CASP), with a slight delay in the public release to ensure high-quality standards.
- Collaboration with SGC Chemistry Teams: Opt-in to collaborate directly with SGC’s chemistry teams, contributing to the development of cutting-edge small molecule discovery methods.
- Industry Collaboration: Opt-in to share your research with our industry partners, opening the door to potential collaborations with leading pharmaceutical companies.
Open Data Integration
Your participation contributes directly to our open data strategy, which aims to democratize drug discovery by creating high-quality, openly accessible datasets. By sharing your protein samples, you are not just advancing your research—you are contributing to a global effort to make drug discovery faster, more efficient, and more accessible through open science.