SGC joins European Union Framework Programme 7 grant on Affinomics.

The SGC has been awarded more than 0.5 M Euro as part of a joint EU FP7 -Health grant: 'Protein Binders for Characterisation of Human Proteome Function: Generation, Validation, Application "Affinomics", which encompasses 15 participant labs in eight different European countries for 5 years.

The Affinomics programme aims to leverage existing efforts in Europe to generate large-scale resources of validated protein-binding molecules ('binders') as affinity reagents for characterisation of the human proteome. These binders will be applied in comprehensive structural and functional analyses of protein expression, interactions and complexes.

Proteome targets will be focused on five categories of inter-related human proteins involved in signal transduction, cell regulation and cancer. Targets include protein kinases, SH2 domain-containing proteins, protein tyrosine phosphatases, proteins somatically mutated in cancers and candidate cancer biomarkers.