Hello - the work has really two parts. One is our own study of cancer genome and proteome - identifying which genes/proteins can be used for improved diagnosis and predicting treatment outcome. We mostlyl focus on lung, ovarian, but also prostate, breast and head&neck cancers. Our study frequently leads to identifying important proteins for which we do not have structure - thus we have new targets for structural studies.

The other part is related to biology at large and structural genomics studies. Here many proteins are being screened for various reasons to identify conditions that may lead to their successful crystallization and structure determination.

WCG-HCC is analyzing images from the crystallization screens for both parts. What happends in each individual case depends on the context of the discovery. For example, we may have a specific protein that may be worth a while to study as a new drug target. We also have several genes and proteins that we need to study further, to understand how mutations affect structure and function of them, and thus information on their structure is needed.

While we make progress, there are still many cancer-related proteins with unknown structure. While WCG is helping to process the backlog of 12,000 proteins our colleagues in Buffalo screen about 200+ new proteins every month. The numbers are continue to increase.

thank you,

Igor

Thankfully our processing power continues to increase.

Keep up the good work.