A New Venture For HWI
by Eaton E. (Ed) Lattman
Fall 2009

The HWI is embarking on an exciting new venture that promises both to bring in useful amounts of revenue and to create visibility and collaborative potential in the world of big pharma.  As described below, the HWI is contracting to manage a large facility owned jointly by nine large pharmaceutical firms. The management process will provide many opportunities to interest one or more of these firms in HWI technology (such as the high throughput crystallization laboratory) or drug target research.

Along with crystallographers around the world, Hauptman-Woodward scientists make use of large, centralized facilities called synchrotrons, which generate intense x-ray beams having many favorable characteristics for our experiments.  Generically, synchrotrons contain a large central ring around which high-energy electrons circulate, spinning off x-rays as they go.  Spaced around the wall of the ring are apertures through which x-rays come out to be harnessed for experiments. Just outside each aperture is an experimental station containing expensive and sophisticated equipment enabling the experiments to be carried out.

The financial model for synchrotrons is a hybrid.  The government (in the US usually the Department of Energy) pays for the ring, while experimental teams of various kinds pay for the individual experimental stations.  Teams may be university consortia or other non-profits, governmental agencies, or industrial partnerships.  To compensate for the subsidy contributed by the government, each experimental team has to give 25% of the time on its station to so-called general users, people with grants who need access for experiments.

Each of these experimental stations is a significant small business, with ~10 FTEs and a budget in excess of $1 million per year, and these businesses need to be managed like any other.  Hauptman-Woodward has been invited to manage one such facility, abbreviated IMCA-CA. Here are some key points.

• The Industrial Macromolecular Crystallography Association (IMCA) is a consortium of (currently) nine firms forming a Collaborative Access Team (CAT) that has constructed, owns, and operates an experimental station, sector 17, at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) near Chicago. 
• The principal role of the manager is to serve as the employer of the sector staff.
• Other roles include representing IMCA to the APS, monitoring performance and safety, and interfacing between the needs of the companies and the staff.
• The annual budget of the beamline is ~$1.4 million, including 26% indirect cost for the manager.
• The project will require time from Eaton Lattman, Eddie Snell, and Walter Pangborn, as well as effort from our staff, particularly Lisa Foti and her associates. Collectively we feel that this time commitment is manageable. 
• There are many opportunities for collaborating with one or more of the firms, or with IMCA-CAT as a whole, in the development and/or use of tools developed at HWI.  One example is the so-called “capette” system, being developed by George DeTitta and Eddie Snell in collaboration with Stanford.  Capettes are special cells in which a crystal can first be grown, and then directly mounted in front of the x-ray beam.

In summary, this venture is an exciting new opportunity for HWI.  It will provide welcome diversification in our funding sources as well as opportunities for staff development and new collaborations with our colleagues in industry.