New WEHI facility opens door to drug design

The head of the structural biology division at Melbourne's Walter and Eliza Hall Institute has tipped "one to two new drugs" will be developed at the facility in the next five years.

The addition of the new division, opened today, will allow WEHI, one of Australia's research powerhouses, to expand into drug discovery.

The centrepiece of the AUD$2.5 million facility is an X-ray crystallography machine obtained with the help of a $1 million grant from the Australian Cancer Research Foundation, which will be used to determine the structure of proteins and protein-ligand interactions.

The head of the division, Prof Peter Colman, said that protein structure was becoming an essential component of drug discovery and development. When the structure of the influenza protein neuraminidase was described in 1982, around two protein structures were described each month, he said.

"Two new protein structures are described every day," Colman said. And many pharmaceutical companies would not pursue drug development without knowledge of the target protein's structure, he said.

"My goal is that in the next five years emerging from these projects should be one to two new drugs," said Colman.

The new facility also includes protein chemistry laboratories, computational chemistry and in silico screening of small molecules, in addition to a medicinal chemistry group located at WEHI's Bundoora campus. NMR facilities, currently available through the Victorian College of Pharmacy, will be available at the Bio21 Institute, currently under construction. And Colman said the Synchrotron, due to be completed in 2007, would complement the facility.

"We now have the capacity in-house to go from basic biology to rational drug design," said WEHI director Prof Suzanne Cory today at the opening of the new structural biology laboratories.

The division is already a partner in three NHMRC grants, including a collaboration with the Ludwig Institute and CSIRO Health Sciences and Nutrition to look at EGF receptors. The partners are also playing a role in WEHI's own apoptosis project.

Victorian Innovation Minister John Brumby, who officially opened the facility today, said it would ensure Victoria's top drug discovery scientists would have the tools needed to make major breakthroughs.