SWARM INTELLIGENCE for RAPID biomolecular structural determination from NMr data - Isis Project No 2536
Researchers at the University of Oxford have developed a new high-speed method for determination of macromolecule structures from raw NMR spectroscopy data.
BACKGROUND
Structural determination of proteins is particularly challenging for those that are unsuitable for X-ray crystallography analysis (at least 15%), many of which are highly relevant drug targets. Current best practice uses an iterative process to solve the structure of such proteins from NMR spectroscopy data. This process is subjective, error-prone, can take several weeks if not months, and may ultimately be unsuccessful. Despite current limitations, the NMR spectroscopy market is estimated at $500M-1B.
THE OXFORD INVENTION
Oxford researchers have developed a straightforward technique to alleviate the problems associated with current iterative methods by utilizing the principle of swarm intelligence (SI) to achieve a single-step determination of biomolecular structures from NMR data. (SI) is the property of a system whereby the collective behaviours of unsophisticated agents interacting locally with their environment cause coherent functional global patterns to emerge. In the case of the Oxford invention, a swarm of individual “molecular generators” working in parallel is able to rapidly form a consensus protein structure.
By using the Oxford software, biomolecular structures can be accurately determined from proteins in solution in only a few hours, once raw data has been acquired. The software should also enable more accurate protein structure determination on low and mid range spectrometers. It has been validated with two proteins for which the structures have been previously determined using either X-ray crystallography or NMR, with excellent results. Structural determination of further proteins and protein-ligand complexes is underway.
COMMERCIALISATION OPPORTUNITY
A patent has been filed to protect the technology and Isis would like to talk to potential commercial partners.