APS gets funding for new beamlines for structural biology

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) are supporting the design and construction of a user facility consisting of three new beamlines at Argonne National Laboratory's Advanced Photon Source.

The beamlines themselves will be custom designed and constructed by ACCEL GmbH, a company located in Bergish Gladbach, Germany. NIGMS and NCI plan to spend a total of around $23 million on the project and estimate that the three beamlines will be fully operational in about three years.

"The primary motive for the project is to benefit the scientific community by facilitating access to synchrotron beamlines. This is particularly important as the structural genomics effort at NIGMS begins to pick up speed," said Dr Marvin Cassman, Director of NIGMS.

NCI is particularly interested in how the synchrotron facilities will advance the study of cancer-related molecules. "A detailed understanding of protein structure will help cancer researchers develop drugs targeted to specific types of cancer," said Dr Dinah Singer, Director of NCI's Division of Cancer Biology.