Children’s Research Hospital St. Jude today announced an investment of nearly $13 million for a new research collaboration with scientists at Columbia University, Duke University and Stanford University to expand our understanding of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), which are vital proteins that affect humans. health and disease.
The collaborative research program is led by two St. Jude, Scott Blanchard, Ph.D., and M. Madan Babu, Ph.D., who are collaborating with Nobel laureate and Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher Robert Lefkowitz, MD, of Duke University; Jonathan Javitch, MD, Ph.D., of Columbia University. and George Skiniotis, Ph.D., and Alice Ting, Ph.D., both of Stanford University.
GPCRs have been linked or implicated in more than 100 human diseases and disorders and The GPCR Collaborative will use advanced methodologies, including time-resolved, single-molecule imaging, cryo-electron microscopy, proximity labeling, data science, and other techniques to develop novel strategies to treat a range of devastating pediatric diseases, including cancer. These approaches could lead to the development of better GPCR targeting drugs.
Typically, there are few opportunities for teams from different institutions to come together for collaboration. Here, we bring together our individual unique innovations and expertise to understand the mechanism by which GPCRs work with the ultimate goal of using this information to identify and design more effective drugs. This collaboration will help us define the principles underlying the efficacy of nature’s GPCR regulators and apply them to clinical therapies to increase their efficacy and hopefully reduce or eliminate side effects.”
Scott Blanchard, Ph.D., St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
As described in the Strategic Plan 2022-2027, the St. Jude Research Collaboratives is part of an overall foundational effort to fund collaborative research that addresses complex scientific problems with transformative potential for the diseases treated at St. Jude.
The St. Jude Research Collaboratives was created to create interdisciplinary teams made up of scientists from St. Jude and their peers at other institutions who may face specific challenges related to treating childhood cancers and other devastating diseases. The collaborative proposal requires a principal investigator of St. Jude to assemble a team consisting of leading scientists from St. Jude and other institutions. St. Jude funds approved projects.
“We understand that a team-oriented approach can increase the speed of research progress,” said James R. Downing, MD, president and CEO of St. Jude. “The complexity of childhood cancers and other life-threatening diseases requires collaboration between the best minds in their respective fields.”
Since 2017, six different Research Collaborative projects have been funded with an investment of more than $80 million with institutions such as Princeton University, Washington University St. Louis, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Broad Institute of MIT/Harvard, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research of MIT, Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania and the NIH/National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, The State University of New York at Buffalo, The Rockefeller University, University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts General Hospital. By 2027, St. Jude plans to support even more partnerships focused on unmet needs in science and medicine, which will bring the total investment to $160 million.
“The research partners of St. Jude are designed to focus on problems with the greatest potential to transform understanding of the devastating pediatric diseases we treat,” said Charles WM Roberts MD, Ph.D., executive vice president and director of St. Jude. Comprehensive Cancer Center, which developed and oversees the program. “The scientific progress we have seen to date across all collaborations has been remarkable, and we look forward to great advances with the addition of the GPCR team.”
