Brazil launches its first open-access scientific research center

Supported by FAPESP and the Structural Genomics Consortium, the center will focus on researching target proteins for the development of new drugs and more drought-resistant crops.

By Karina Toledo

Agência FAPESP – Identifying key proteins in the human genome for the development of new drugs and discovering how to make important crops more drought resistant are the objectives of the newly created Protein Kinase Chemical Biology Center at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in São Paulo State, Brazil. The official opening took place on March 10.

Supported by FAPESP through the Partnership for Technological Innovation Program (PITE), the center is Brazil’s first open-science facility, providing completely free and open research results to the world and advancing unrestricted discovery as a member of the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), a nonprofit public-private partnership that maintains a collaborative network of scientists, pharmaceutical companies and research funding agencies.

“The SGC maintains two other centers, hosted by the University of Oxford in the UK and the University of Toronto in Canada. Both are dedicated to researching biomedically important proteins. Here at UNICAMP, besides advancing in this field, we plan to leverage the knowledge and technology developed in partnership with the pharmaceutical industry to learn about plant biology as well,” said Paulo Arruda, Full Professor of Genetics at UNICAMP’s Biology Institute and the head of the new Brazilian unit.

One of the goals is to find out how to boost agricultural production while simultaneously reducing water consumption in the context of increasingly frequent extreme weather due to climate change.

Research conducted in this field will target enzymes known as kinases, which regulate important processes both in the human organism and in plants, including cell division, proliferation and differentiation. Because of this role, kinases are considered to be potential targets for the development of drugs.

The agreement, signed on March 10 in São Paulo, establishes that FAPESP will invest US$4.3 million, UNICAMP R$1.9 million and the SGC US$1.3 million in the new center. Its research output will be made available to the global scientific community with no strings attached, bound by no patents or intellectual property agreements, as is already the case with the SGC’s other two research centers.

According to Arruda, the new center’s activities will begin in July. The structure foreseen for the first five years will comprise between 25 and 30 researchers. “However, we know that initiatives like this attract good students and postdoctoral researchers, so our staff may end up even larger. Anyone interested in researching in this field from any institution can join the group,” he said.

FAPESP President Celso Lafer, who opened the agreement-signing ceremony, called the initiative a “grand collective effort to advance knowledge” and stressed that it may help to develop new drugs for diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s.

Right from the start of discussions on creating the center, FAPESP considered the proposal “most interesting” because its activities will be especially important to the development of science and technology in São Paulo State, said Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz, FAPESP’s Scientific Director.

“It offers an opportunity to fund research that will lead to results with major intellectual, social and economic impacts,” he added. “It also creates international collaboration opportunities for researchers in São Paulo. Last, but not least, it creates an opportunity for researchers in São Paulo to partner with business enterprises.”

Global network

The SGC maintains a global network based on collaboration with more than 300 research groups in 40 countries. It also partners with ten of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, including GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Novartis, Pfizer and Bayer, which not only contribute financially but also pool their expertise to develop essential tools for the understanding of how kinases work, said Aled Edwards, SGC’s co-founder and CEO.

“The best way to find out how a kinase works is to invent a chemical probe, a small molecule capable of binding specifically to a target enzyme and inhibiting its activity. You inject it into an animal and see what happens. However, it takes between 18 months and two years to develop each of these chemical probes, and the cost is very high,” Edwards said.

Beyond providing some chemical probes that they already hold in their compound libraries, GSK and the SGC’s other partner pharmaceutical companies will work with the UNICAMP center over the coming years to help to develop at least 15 new molecules designed to investigate the activities of kinases relatively unknown to science.

According to Edwards, the Human Genome Project revealed the existence of more than 500 types of kinase, but so far, only about 40 have been studied in depth.

“The dominant research funding model in the world today means scientists everywhere work on the same projects,” he said. “We want to work on the kinases no one else is working on because we believe they offer novelties of huge importance to the development of new drugs. Congratulations to FAPESP and UNICAMP for sharing the risk of exploring the unknown with us.”

Bill Zuercher, Senior Scientific Investigator in GSK Research & Development, was also at the ceremony. For pharmaceutical companies, he explained, partnering with the SGC and the open innovation model represent a strong chance of reducing the high failure rate in the new drug development process. Currently, approximately 96% of candidate drugs fail in the clinical trial stage and never come to market.

“One of the causes of this high failure rate is the inappropriate choice of an initial target. This isn’t an easy problem to solve,” Zuercher said. “We need to advance our knowledge of fundamental biology, which is the kind of research even a large organization such as GSK can’t do on its own. It would take centuries to understand how all kinases work.” Zuercher is tasked with structuring the research conducted by UNICAMP’s new center in medicinal chemistry.

UNICAMP Vice Dean Alvaro Crósta stressed that SGC-UNICAMP will be the first Brazilian research center created according to the open innovation paradigm.

“This model is highly suited to the initial stages of new drug development because of the very large number of molecules to be analyzed,” he said. “Besides its very significant impact in the field of public health, the initiative will foster intense academic interaction between faculty, researchers, undergraduates and graduates and their peers at partner institutions. Opportunities for collaboration will certainly arise, enhancing the presence and international impact of our activities.” Another participant in the ceremony was Wen Hwa Lee, a former student at UNICAMP who is now SGC’s Strategic Alliances Manager and who was one of the people who helped to set up the partnership.

Also attending was Opher Gileadi, a researcher affiliated with Oxford University, who will stay in Brazil full time during the center’s first year to help organize its operations.

“The plant research area will be full of surprises,” Gileadi said. “We’ll take the reagents and knowledge developed for humans and use them in plants. The starting point will be what we expect, but believe me, the most interesting part will be the unexpected.”