IMCA Consortium to Accelerate Drug Discovery Welcomes Janssen

The Industrial Macromolecular Crystallography Association (IMCA), an association of pharmaceutical companies that leverages the power of high-energy X-rays to accelerate structural biology research for drug discovery, announced that Janssen Research & Development, LLC has joined IMCA. Operating for more than 25 years, IMCA is managed by the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute (HWI), an international leader in structural biology.

IMCA’s research facility, IMCA-Collaborative Access Team (IMCA-CAT), is located at the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory.  Complementing HWI’s commitment to finding the fundamental cause of many diseases, the IMCA-CAT research facility aims to accelerate drug discovery in the pharmaceutical industry. Through synchrotron-based structural biology research, IMCA-CAT has been instrumental in the development of many of today’s pharmaceuticals.

“IMCA is unique, recognized world-wide for the collaborative approach of our member pharmaceutical companies in meeting their common need for structural biology data,” said Dr. Lisa J. Keefe, IMCA-CAT Director and Vice President for Advancing Therapeutics at HWI. “Our research facility provides exceptional quality molecular structure data at ultra-high throughput rates.  With Janssen joining IMCA, the potential for our collective impact on structural biology technology development and drug development is limitless.”

The IMCA-CAT research facility is equipped with state-of-the-art technology and designed for experiments using the methodology of macromolecular crystallography for determining the three-dimensional molecular structures of drug candidates interacting with their targets. HWI’s investigators utilize this powerful technique in their research on cancer and studies on the foundations of diseases. IMCA-CAT pharmaceutical members benefit from guaranteed, frequent, and routine access to the facility for X-ray diffraction data collection. In addition to Janssen, other IMCA-CAT pharmaceutical member companies are AbbVie, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck, Novartis and Pfizer.

The IMCA-CAT facility and team have played an active role in the response to the global novel coronavirus pandemic. The facility has remained fully operational to support important COVID-19-related research and critical pharmaceutical research being done by its members and other partners.

About IMCA    IMCA and its pharmaceutical members work to drive innovation and sustain cutting-edge operations, thereby distinguishing the IMCA-CAT as a cost-effective and world-class facility for pharmaceutical research. In addition to its member companies, the IMCA-CAT facility is available to all researchers in structural biology to collect X-ray diffraction data on macromolecules. For additional information, visit www.imca-cat.org.