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Structural Genomics Consortium at Goethe University awarded €11.8 million grant for the development of new cancer therapeutics.
Frankfurt, February 26, 2024– The Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main has secured a significant €11.8 million in funding from the German Cancer Aid for the development of new, targeted cancer drugs, with a particular emphasis on rare tumor diseases.
This initiative is part of the German Cancer Aid's new funding strategy, aimed at empowering university scientists to lead the way in cancer drug development. Bridging the gap from laboratory research to patient care involves extensive preclinical testing to confirm new treatments' efficacy and safety, a process both financially and temporally demanding. Addressing this challenge, German Cancer Aid is investing a total of €20 million over five years in three ambitious projects to forge novel cancer treatments.
Among the three projects, the "Targeting transcriptional Addiction In Cancer (TACTIC)" initiative is led by Dr. Stefan Knapp, Chief Scientific Officer and Principal Investigator at the SGC-Frankfurt. TACTIC will be dedicated to the development of pharmacological strategies to amend the aberrant transcriptional programs characteristic of cancer cells. Diverging from the traditional reliance on small molecule drugs, TACTIC is set to advance the field through the introduction of novel therapeutic modalities, such as proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs) to inhibit but also to selectively degrade oncogenic proteins, thereby targeting molecular entities previously deemed undruggable. The project aims to navigate through various stages of the drug discovery process while simultaneously developing technological platforms to facilitate ongoing and future cancer-related drug discovery efforts.
“The development and testing of new active ingredients are simply too expensive and time-consuming. The industry is hesitant to research innovative treatment options for rare tumor diseases. University research is more independent in this respect. But the necessary structures are often missing here to carry out the development of new drugs from the idea to the clinical trial,” said Dr. Stefan Knapp.
TACTIC's approach to uncovering and influencing the genetic mechanisms underlying cancer underscores a strategic shift towards precise, impactful therapeutic interventions. This initiative reflects the consortium's dedication to accelerating drug discovery through the principles of open science and collaborative effort.
Read more on this funding announcement.
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About the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC)
The Structural Genomics Consortium is a global public-private partnership that seeks to accelerate drug discovery by fostering collaboration among a large network of scientists in academia and industry and making all research outputs openly available to the scientific community. The current SGC research sites are located at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Karolinska Institute, McGill University, University College, London, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the University of Toronto.