Accelerating Structure-Based Drug Discovery

Shamrock Structures is a protein crystallography research services company that provides pharmaceutical researchers with access to unrivaled technologies and expertise for three dimensional protein structure determinations. Possessing protein structure information empowers researchers to conduct ‘structure-based drug discovery’.

Protein Crystallography is the science of determining the structures of therapeutically relevant proteins at the atomic scale, the most basic level of our biological make-up. There are approximately 100,000 different proteins in the human body. They are the building blocks of life and play critical roles in our biology by doing the body’s work.

Since proteins are what drugs target, being able to see them and how a drug interacts with them structurally, enables researchers to use a computer-aided structure-based approach to design and build better drugs that bind more tightly into a protein’s active site like a ‘key into a lock’.

Company Roots

Shamrock Structures was founded in 2003 by Flavin Ventures, an early stage venture capital and management group for innovative Midwestern life sciences companies focused on drug discovery.

Global Scope

Until recent breakthroughs in knowledge of the human genome, almost all drugs targeted the same 500 proteins. With increased genomic information it has become known that approximately 10,000 proteins are therapeutically relevant potential drug targets. The world-wide demand by researchers for protein structures is growing rapidly. Shamrock Structures is set up to determine increasing numbers of protein structures for pharmaceutical companies as this demand continues to grow.

X-ray Crystallography Technologies

Shamrock Structures provides protein crystallography services on an outsourced basis to pharmaceutical companies. Our clients engage with us to apply technology and expertise in X-ray crystallography to solve protein structures. Most often, our clients seek co-crystal structure determination, meaning their lead drug compound(s) in complex with a protein target of interest.

Through our staff and our network of partners, we provide services including construct design, DNA cloning, protein expression, purification, crystallization, X-ray synchrotron data collection and ultimately protein structure determination for our clients. We are advantageously located a mile from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and we have an agreement with Argonne to efficiently access the Advanced Photon Source (APS). The APS technology is the only 3rd generation X-ray synchrotron light source in North America and it permits the fastest protein structure determination currently possible.

Since its inception in 2003, Shamrock has routinely provided its CrystalEXPRESS™ ‘Mail-in crystallography’ service to pharmaceutical companies that prefer to send their protein crystals for APS analysis and protein structure determination by our scientists, rather than traveling themselves.