London, September 28, 2011 - The international Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) today announced $48.9 million in new funding has been attained. This renewed investment will allow the SGC to further develop its open access research program to support drug discovery and the development of new medicines.  The announcement comes as the SGC on June 30 successfully completed its second phase of funding (2007-2011).

"Sleeping sickness", also known as human African trypanosomiasis, is responsible for approximately 30,000 deaths each year and 70 million people are at risk of infection, as estimated by the World Health Organization. The parasite that causes this disease is predominantly found in the developing world, and - like many other ‘neglected diseases’ - there is a shortage of inexpensive, efficacious drugs available to combat this illness.

The successful segregation of chromosomes in mitosis requires the timely coordination of cell cycle events to ensure the bipo¬lar attachment of sister chromatids via their kinetochores to the mitotic spindle before the initiation of anaphase. Deregulation of this process or uncoupling of its component parts can lead to aneuploidy and chromosomal instability (CIN), which are recog¬nized hallmarks of cancer.

Apicomplexan parasites are a diverse group of protozoan parasites, several of which cause important human and animal diseases, such as malaria, cryptosporidiosis and toxoplasmosis. Many of these diseases are endemic in developing countries, which are impacted by the lack of cost-efficient treatments. Cryptosporidiosis and toxoplasmosis can also be life-threatening to immunocompromised individuals, e.g. those undergoing organ transplantation or chemotherapy and HIV/AIDS patients, who cannot fight back the infection and are thus dependent on drugs to kill the parasites.

Toxoplasmosis is a parasitic disease caused by the apicomplexan protozoa Toxoplasma gondii and can pose a significant threat to immunocompromised individuals, e.g. those undergoing organ transplantation or chemotherapy and HIV/AIDS patients, who cannot fight back the infection and are thus dependent on drugs to control the infection.

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.

Two influential journals are now accepting and publishing articles that are enhanced using a unique platform known as iSee (interactive Structurally enhanced experience), developed in a collaboration between the SGC's Dr. Brian Marsden and Dr. Wen Hwa Lee, with Prof. Ruben Abagyan and his team from MolSoft L.L.C.

The Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), an international public-private partnership that aims to determine three dimensional structures of medically important proteins, announced today the release into the public domain of its 1000th high resolution protein structure.

A research team led by scientists from Oxford University (including the Structural Genomics Consortium, the Botnar Research Centre, the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, the Wellcome Building for Molecular Physiology, and the australian Diamantina Institute in Brisbane), have successfully deciphered the molecular mechanism how an ER protease (ERAP1) functions in a key step in cellular immunity- the processing of peptide antigens that are presented to Major Histocompatibilty Complex 1 (MHC1) molecules.

An intuitive and interactive tool to understand the structure of important biological macromolecules is now available for the readers of the Journal of Inherited Metabolic Disease (JIMD), the leading international journal covering all aspects of inborn errors of metabolism. Called iSee (for Interactive Structural Enhanced Experience), this molecular graphics tool will allow the readers to interactively fly over, zoom into and dive through 3D visualisations in atomic detail.