NTU to set up structural biology research lab

Sinagpore

THE Nanyang Technological University (NTU) will set up a S$30 million institute dedicated to research in structural biology, a key area of study in medicine.

The NTU Institute of Structural Biology (NISB) will be fully operational in a year, gathering more than 70 scientists and researchers from Singapore under one roof.

It will be led by Professor Daniela Rhodes, who won the S$24 million Tier 3 Ministry of Education research grant in 2013. The funds will partly bankroll the institute's research projects now in the pipeline.

NTU said the institute will be the world's first university research facility to be equipped with a cryo transmission electron microscope, which can magnify protein molecules such as enzymes up to 10 million times - and render them in 3D.

Professor Bertil Andersson, the university's president, said: "These 3D images of proteins at the atomic level hold the key in resolving some of the world's pressing health problems such as aging and cancer. Understanding how molecules work and how their functions can be modified could spur ground-breaking drug and vaccine discoveries."

The NISB is to be modelled after the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge in the UK. One of the birthplaces of modern molecular biology, it has produced 15 Nobel Laureates, said NTU.

Prof Rhodes, who spent 42 years at the MRC Laboratory, has worked with several of these Nobel Prize winners. She noted that since 1946, 14 Nobel Prizes have been awarded to 23 scientists from the field of structural biology.

The NISB will be part of NTU's Life Sciences cluster, comprising the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKCMedicine), the School of Biological Sciences, the School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering and the Singapore Centre on Environmental Life Sciences Engineering.

The NISB, construction of which will be done in July, will be housed in LKCMedicine's new seven-storey Experimental Medicine Building on its main campus.