BioCentury
ARTICLE | Politics & Policy

Oxford, foundation unveil center focused on targets, big data

May 8, 2013 12:19 AM UTC

The Li Ka Shing Foundation and the U.K. government each provided L20 million ($31 million) in funding to build the Li Ka Shing Center for Health Information and Discovery, a new research center at the University of Oxford. The center will house up to 600 scientists across two institutes. The Target Discovery Institute (TDI) will use high throughput and automated genomic and chemical screens to more accurately identify better drug targets for development by industry, while the Big Data Institute (BDI) will develop approaches for generating, storing and analyzing large genomic data sets and patient health records to better understand diseases and treatments.

TDI also will now partly house the not-for-profit public-private Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), which funds precompetitive research in structural and chemical biology to define better drug targets for diseases. The consortium uses high throughput screening to determine 3D structures of potential targets. ...