Ethan Forum moderator Project administrator Project developer Joined: Aug 22 05 Posts: 286 ID: 23 Credit: 9,169,034 RAC: 1,585
The story doesn't really go into if it's solely for Baker's lab, but he is quoted in the article. I'm sure he'll be around to let us know more soon. In the mean time, CONGRATS!!!
I guess I won't have to scrape together mint stamps out of my collection to furnish to Feetfirst for the DVD mailings now. :-)
There we go. Reminds me of the scene in the movie, 'Contact', where Dr. Arraway was told, "You have your money".
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Jose Joined: Mar 28 06 Posts: 820 ID: 69098 Credit: 48,297 RAC: 0
One of the elements that impress me the most about the announcement is the requirement that all the groups that are sharing the awards money MUST share information and collaborate with each other.
So not only is the grant a recognition of the great group of scientists that got funded but it is a call for more collaboration among scientists.
My only hope now is that David doenst go conventional on us and get a haircut. :)
I do have one concern. Will this project now expend more of its research solely for HIV or will cancer still be a big part of this project? Since I'm a cancer patient, I'm here to try to help others not to have to go through what I am going through. Will the lessons learned extend into the cancer research field?
I haven't seen details about how they intend to use Rosetta to fight cancer... but yes, if they learn how to "dock" with an selective portion of an HIV protein (the portion that doesn't constantly morph itself), they'll have another tool in the toolbox to apply to locating and knocking out cancer cells.
Actually, I believe their approach to HIV is to "design" a protein that looks similar enough to the unchanging portion of HIV that the body can build antibodies to it. So their current approach to HIV is, I believe, a vaccine. Not sure if the approach to cancer would be a vaccine or more of a drug, which would locate and dock with existing cancer cells and either genetically correct them back to normal, or prevent them from dividing.
Either way, "docking" or "design", the basic research Rosetta does can be applied to the proteins of other diseases.
...another way to look at it, if they are successful at creating an HIV vaccine, it would make it VERY easy to get sufficient funding to apply towards cancer research.
Hope your treatment is going well Tony.
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I think R's cancer-related approach was mostly focused on "gene therapy" kind of stuff, e.g. altering/creating DNA-modifying enzymes to repair damaged DNA
The other, "traditional" approach would be to help in "virtual screening" of drugs (like CureCancer approach) by
I do have one concern. Will this project now expend more of its research solely for HIV or will cancer still be a big part of this project? Since I'm a cancer patient, I'm here to try to help others not to have to go through what I am going through. Will the lessons learned extend into the cancer research field?
tony
Tony,
For the foreseeable future the effort of R@H is actually cumulative in that what we learn on project A helps sharped the tools for project B as well.
Not only that, HIV is only a portion of the research effort here. Big $$$ for the entire project consortium to be sure, but we only get some. We've got irons in a number of fires and those won't get pushed aside just because Gates dumped some $$$ on the overall project.
On a personal note, here's hoping things go well for you. My family has been stricken by cancer.... I understand how tough it can be. -KEL
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Keith Akins Joined: Oct 22 05 Posts: 176 ID: 6022 Credit: 71,779 RAC: 0
I see it this way, (By the way Congrats Team Baker!!!) Bill Gates and Mr. Buffet just stuck a pencil in the eye of WSJ after their negative article concerning virtual microbiology experiments using DC. Also, If Rosetta and other DC's can produce tangible results to the HIV problem, then the gates are wide open for every single protein related desease problem. Things would really start to happen.
AWESOME!
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David Baker Forum moderator Project administrator Project developer Project scientist Joined: Sep 17 05 Posts: 616 ID: 122 Credit: 214,854 RAC: 1
IAlso, If Rosetta and other DC's can produce tangible results to the HIV problem, then the gates are wide open for every single protein related desease problem. Things would really start to happen.
My opinion of Bill just went up a few points.
we feel the same way. the methods we are using to design potential HIV vaccines should be directly transferable to design of vaccines to other pathogens--basically, we design proteins that mimic critical regions on the pathogen to stimulate the immune system to make antibodies against these parts of the virus, bacteria, etc.
while we are very excited about making a serious push towards an HIV vaccine, this will not reduce our efforts to develop new proteins to target genes causing cancer. in fact, Jim Havranak in my group has just had very exciting results on engineering an endonuclease to cut within a human disease gene.
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In case Dr Baker's last comment "our efforts to develop new proteins to target genes causing cancer. in fact, Jim Havranak in my group has just had very exciting results on engineering an endonuclease to cut within a human disease gene." isn't quite clear for those of us who are not familiar with their science, here's a more elaborate description of Rosetta's recent work applicable to cancer (from 1-Jun-06 edition of Nature):
Protein engineering: OK Computer (pp 656-659)
One of the great remaining problems in computational protein design involves the redesign of a DNA-modifying protein so that it recognizes, and alters, a new DNA sequence. For example, changing the specificity of a nuclease a protein that cuts DNA at a specific site could be beneficial for a range of biotechnological and medical applications.
In this week's Nature, David Baker and colleagues have shown that it is possible to modify the sequence specificity of a "homing endonuclease" called I-MsoI. They used a computational approach to screen a virtual library of mutant proteins and predicted which amino acids needed to be changed to re-engineer this enzyme so that it recognized, and cleaved, a new DNA sequence. The mutant protein was highly active and was able to cleave the new DNA sequence, but did not modify the original sequence. The authors hope to redesign this and other DNA-modifying enzymes to alter a range of DNA sequences, so that they could specifically target almost any sequence in the genome. These computationally designed proteins may be useful in a range of medical and biotechnological applications, including gene therapeutic and other targeted genomics applications.
Altering the specificity of DNA-cleaving enzymes could be useful in many medical or biotechnological applications, but it is quite a challenge in terms of computational protein design. Ashwell et al. have used computational redesign to alter the target-site specificity of the I-MsoI homing endonuclease, while maintaining wild-type binding affinity. The redesigned enzyme binds and cleaves the new DNA recognition site about 10,000 times more effectively than the wild-type enzyme, with target discrimination comparable to the original endonuclease. These results suggest that computational protein design methods can be used to create novel and highly specific endonucleases for gene therapy and other applications.
Letter: Computational redesign of endonuclease DNA binding and cleavage specificity
Justin Ashworth, James J. Havranek, Carlos M. Duarte, Django Sussman, Raymond J. Monnat, Jr, Barry L. Stoddard and David Baker
Dr. Baker:
I'd like to add my congratulations to you. Nicely done and well deserved.
It's nice to see the Gates Foundation get into this area.
I assume this means you can cut down the mac and cheese dinners to twice a week?
Sorry, I had to. <BG>
Movieman
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Bill Gates is the worlds greatest philanthropist, these are grants made in the health sector alone so far this year!
A lot of the guys critics should read some of that site.
I would guess that the grant will be used to employ additional research staff, and support for them. I doubt there will be a reduction of emphasis on other areas because the grant was given for HIV research.
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