Structural Genomics Consortium funding announced

Complete funding for the second phase of the Structural Genomics Consortium has been announced, with 13 partners (including three pharmaceutical firms) providing more than $105 million. The consortium — led by Dr Aled Edwards at the Univ of Toronto with three nodes in Toronto, the Univ of Oxford and the Karolinska Institutet — is dedicated to identifying protein structures related to human disease and making them freely available for research. The Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation (MRI) has already announced its $15-million contribution (R$, April 10/07). The other funding partners and their contributions (where available) are: The Wellcome Trust ($34.2 million), Genome Canada through the Ontario Genomics Institute) ($18 million, Canadian Institutes of Health Research ($10 million), Canada Foundation for Innovation ($3.2 million) and four Swedish organizations. They are the Karolinska Institutet , Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research, VINNOVA (a Swedish government agency for innovation systems) and Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. The amounts of their contributions and those of the three pharmaceutical firms — Novartis, Merck & Co and GlaxoSmithKline plc — have not been released….