First commercially-owned beamline devoted to high-throughput crystallography
Argonne, IL, and San Diego, CA, July 26, 2000 -- Structural GenomiX (SGX) signed a memorandum of understanding today with the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago. The signing clears the way for SGX to initiate construction of a dual undulator beamline facility there. This SGX-funded facility, which will be ready for use in 2001, will provide the biotechnology company with access to intense X-rays beams from the DOE-funded synchrotron radiation source.
"Today's agreement is recognition that the Department of Energy's world class facilities are essential to advancing the next phase of genomics research," said Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson, who attended the signing. "By making the Energy Department's Advanced Photon Source available to the private sector we are helping to speed the development of new pharmaceuticals to benefit the entire Nation. This follows up on President Clinton's recent call for increased public-private cooperation in biotechnology and genomics research."
The San Diego-based Structural GenomiX is developing a high throughput X-ray crystallography platform to solve the structures of potential drug targets. The SGX facility at the APS will have the first commercially-owned and operated beamlines in the world devoted to high-throughput X-ray crystallography. When completed, this facility will be the most advanced of its kind, providing the capacity to outstrip the current annual world-wide production of protein structures. The company will use the X-rays focused by the beamline to produce images of thousands of proteins and potential drug targets with atomic-level precision.
The Advanced Photon Source is a national synchrotron radiation research facility located at Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, Illinois. It is currently the most brilliant source of radiation in the United States.
"The next step in going from human genome sequence to new drugs is to understand the function of the encoded proteins. The ability to determine the structure of these proteins is a critical component of that process," says George Poste, Ph.D., Chairman of Structural GenomiX and former Chief Science and Technology Officer at SmithKline Beecham. "It will not be possible without state-of-the-art beamlines."
"Building our own facility at the APS will give us unrestricted access to a state-of-the-art beamline tailored to our needs," says SGX President and CEO Tim Harris. "This is a crucial element in our gene-to-structure pipeline. We are very pleased to have secured a sector on which to build a beamline at the APS, as it is the best facility of its kind in the United States. It will support our plans to be the leader in industrial-scale protein structure determination."
"In this field, which holds such huge promise for benefits to mankind, it is a real challenge to move from genome sequencing to accurate high-throughput three-dimensional protein structures," says David Moncton, Argonne's Associate Laboratory Director responsible for the Advanced Photon Source. "Cooperation, rather than competition, between key public resources like the APS and private resources represented by SGX will enable structures to be solved with unprecedented speed."
"Dedicated beam time is absolutely necessary for what SGX plans to do," said Wayne Hendrickson, a founder of SGX and a leading X-ray crystallographer. "This facility will give SGX a set of beamlines for X-ray crystallography that are unsurpassed anywhere in the world. It is exciting to see recent technical advances being implemented so effectively."
The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory conducts basic and applied scientific research across a wide spectrum of disciplines, ranging from high-energy physics to materials science and biotechnology. Argonne also works closely with industry -- over 600 companies in the last decade alone -- to help advance America's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for the future. Argonne is operated by the University of Chicago as part of the U.S. Department of Energy's national laboratory system. The Advanced Photon Source is funded by the DOE Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences.
Located in San Diego, SGX is a high-throughput protein structure determination company, solving structures of interest to pharmaceutical, biotechnology, agriculture and industrial enzyme companies. Access to these structures is available through strategic partnerships and subscription to an annotated database. SGX currently employs 45 people and occupies 35,000 square feet of laboratory and office space. The company can be reached on the web at http://www.stromix.com.
Add'l contacts:
Catherine Foster
Director of Media Relations
Argonne National Laboratory
630-252-5580
Sarah Dry
Communications Coordinator
Structural GenomiX
858-558-4850 x 131