Structural Genomics Consortium

Description of Organisation
The SGC (Structural Genomics Consortium) is a not-for-profit, public-private partnership with the directive to carry out basic science of relevance to drug discovery. The core mandate of the SGC is to determine 3D structures on a large scale and cost-effectively - targeting human proteins of biomedical importance and proteins from human parasites that represent potential drug targets. In these two areas respectively, the SGC is now responsible for >25% and >50% of all structures deposited into the Protein Data Bank each year; to date (Sep.2011) the SGC has released the structures of over 1200 proteins with implications to the development of new therapies for cancer, diabetes, obesity, and psychiatric disorders.

In this effort, the SGC has gained a reputation for the quality and the reproducibility of its research output, and for meeting its milestones on time and on budget. In its current configuration, the SGC includes active research facilities at the Universities of Toronto and Oxford and the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. Current funders of the SGC include GSK, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, the Novartis Research Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and Canadian granting agencies. Recently, these organizations together have committed greater than US$50 million to the consortium to sustain another four years of operation

Since its inception, the SGC has been engaged in pre-competitive research to facilitate the discovery of new medicines. As part of its mission the SGC generates reagents and knowledge related to human proteins and proteins from human parasites. The SGC believes that its output will have maximal benefit if released into the public domain without restriction on use, and has adopted an Open Access policy.