NIGMS Feedback Loop Blog – National Institute of General Medical Sciences

We welcome structural biologists and biologists engaged in functional investigations that benefit from structural data to participate in our PSI:Biology Technologies Workshop at NIH on December 12, 2012.

The workshop will focus on new technologies for high-throughput protein structure determination developed within our Protein Structure Initiative, which is now in a phase called PSI:Biology. Investigators from the initiative will present their latest data and highlight problems and solutions specifically related to protein-protein, protein-ligand, protein-nucleic acid and other macromolecular complexes. In addition to exchanging ideas, workshop participants will have the opportunity to meet potential collaborators.

This meeting is the latest in a series of popular and very productive annual events, dubbed “bottlenecks” and “enabling technologies” workshops. Registration (no longer available), which is now open, is free. If you have questions, especially as we build the agenda, or require any other assistance, please e-mail me or Alexandra Ainsztein or call us at 301-594-4428 or 301-594-0828, respectively.

One of our 50th anniversary scientific society symposia took place last month at the American Chemical Society (ACS) national meeting  in Philadelphia. The day-long event highlighted the fundamental role of chemistry in biomedical science and demonstrated that NIGMS is a major supporter of the field.

Titled “50 Years of NIGMS-Supported Chemistry Enabling Biomedical Research,” the symposium featured distinguished speakers who collectively represent the broad range of medically important chemistry we support. Abstracts of their talks are available online. The speakers were:

• Carolyn Bertozzi, University of California, Berkeley
• Stephen Buchwald, MIT
• Linda Hsieh-Wilson, Caltech
• Anna Mapp, University of Michigan
• Thomas O’Halloran, Northwestern University
• Smita Patel, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey
• Daniel Romo, Texas A&M University
• Melanie Sanford, University of Michigan
• Vern Schramm, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University
• Brian Shoichet, University of California, San Francisco

Tom Wandless of Stanford University and JoAnne Stubbe of MIT moderated the symposium.

The theme of the entire ACS meeting, “Materials for Health and Medicine,” reinforced the importance of chemistry to many types of biomedical research, including the structural and functional characterization and manipulation of biological molecules; the characterization of metabolic pathways; the discovery, development and manufacture of therapeutics and diagnostics; and the design and construction of biocompatible materials and nanoscale devices.

It would be an understatement to say that there was a high degree of interest at the meeting in these aspects of chemistry research. Among the evidence is the enthusiastic participation in the symposium by so many leading scientists, co-sponsorship by five ACS divisions (biological, organic, inorganic, carbohydrate and medicinal chemistry), designation as an ACS Presidential event , and excellent attendance.

For more on our support of chemistry research, see the Feedback Loop post by Mike Rogers, the recent Chemical & Engineering News feature article, and the video of a press conference with chemical scientists whose careers were aided by our support.

So far, NIGMS has funded the work of 36 chemistry Nobel laureates. We’ll find out on October 10 if that number increases this year.