NEW YORK, June 11 - British structural proteomics company Astex Technology has joined the Global Phasing consortium, giving Astex early access to Global Phasing's software for modeling protein structure using x-ray crystallography, the companies said Monday.
Astex, based in Cambridge, UK, joins several undisclosed pharmaceutical companies in the consortium. In addition to early access to software, membership in the consortium allows Astex scientists to consult with Global Phasing software developers.
"Joining the Global Phasing consortium will significantly enhance Astex's ability to convert raw data from our X-ray crystallography machines into three dimensional structures of proteins, thus further improving our rational drug design capabilities," Harren Jhoti, Astex's chief scientific officer, said in a statement.
Global Phasing, also of Cambridge, UK, was founded by Gerard Bricogne, a protein structure researcher at the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. The company develops software for converting x-ray crystallography experimental data into 3-dimensional protein structures.