A Bittersweet Reminder In Neon Lights

Monday 18 December 2006: A striking neon artwork depicting proteins related to deadly diseases will mesmerize passers-by in the centre of London, and act as a bittersweet reminder of the devastation of serious medical conditions.

215 Euston Road is the home of the UK's largest independent medical charity, the Wellcome Trust, and its front windows are a unique opportunity for the public to learn more about the science and issues surrounding health and wellbeing today. Approximately 5,000 people pass-by the Wellcome Trust on a daily basis.

Proteins play a key part in how our bodies interact with disease. The Structural Genomics Consortium, which the Wellcome Trust part funds, has had a crucial role in identifying the structure of some important proteins related to human disease, including cancer, HIV, obesity and malaria. Understanding the structures offers potential targets for novel drugs to treat these conditions.

London designers Graphic Thought Facility have constructed a colourful and thought provoking display depicting a number of these proteins in bright neon signs that will attract the attention of busy onlookers.

Clare Matterson, Director, Medicine, Society and History, The Wellcome Trust, comments: "Graphic Thought Facility's display relates to biomedical issues of global significance where Wellcome Trust-funded research is making a difference. Clearly the new display marks the beginning of an exciting period of development on Euston Road, as we prepare for the launch of our first public venue Wellcome Collection, in the summer of next year."

Paul Neale, Director, Graphic Thought Facility, said: "It is the first time we have experimented with neon on this scale, and the results are impressive. We have worked closely with the Wellcome Trust to understand the nature of these proteins. It's difficult to comprehend how something so beautiful can represent such serious conditions."

The new window display will be unveiled to the public on Monday 18 December 2006.

Graphic Thought Facility's design is the third commission for the Wellcome Trust's Gibbs Building. The first was a series developed by Doshi Levien for the opening of the building in August 2004, and the second was by Glasgow designers Timorous Beasties, inspired by the Wellcome Trust's work on the human genome and malaria.

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Graphic Thought Facility (http://www.graphicthoughtfacility.com/)
Graphic Thought Facility is a London-based graphic design consultancy. Established as a partnership in 1990 and as a limited company in 1997, Graphic Thought Facility work on national and international projects. Significant projects include brand-identity and signage for Frieze Art Fair (2002-6); brand-identity for the Design Museum (2002) and exhibition design their Designer of the Year (2002-6); re-branding, packaging, marketing and press material for Habitat (1996-2002); store graphics and signage for Marks & Spencer (2004-6); catalogue designs for the Saatchi Collection (2002) and The Carnegie Museum of Arts' 54th International (2004).

The Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) http://www.sgc.utoronto.ca/
SGC is a not-for-profit organization that aims to determine the three dimensional structures of proteins of medical relevance, and place them in the public domain without restriction. The SGC operates out of the Universities of Oxford and Toronto and Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm. The SGC works on structures of proteins from its Target List of ~2,000 proteins, which comprises human proteins associated with diseases such as cancer, diabetes, inflammation, and genetic diseases, as well as proteins from human parasites such as those that cause malaria.

Wellcome Collection (www.wellcomecollection.org.uk)
The Wellcome Trust's former headquarters, The Wellcome Building on London's Euston Road, has been redesigned by Hopkins Architects to become a new £30m public venue opening in summer 2007. Free to all, Wellcome Collection will explore the connections between medicine, life and art in the past, present and future. The building will comprise three galleries, a public events space, the Wellcome Library, a café, a bookshop, conference facilities and a members' club.

The five neon signs are based on the following protein structures:

Leptin and Obesity
Protein Database number 1AX8
Leptin is the protein that regulates how people's bodies store fat. It inhibits eating, by making you feel full instead of hungry. It also makes you burn off calories. Leptin was originally discovered by studying mutant mice that didn't know when to stop eating and so became huge. In 1994 researchers discovered that the reason these mice ate so much was that they couldn't produce proper leptin.

In rare cases, people can't make leptin properly and become obese. Leptin treatment can help them lose weight. For most of the population however there appears to be no correlation between obesity and the different forms of the gene that produces leptin.

Developing Antibiotics
Plasmodium yoelii holo-(Acyl-carrier protein) synthase
SGC Database number 2BDD

Fatty acids are used by all organisms. They make up the membranes that hold cells and their contents together and store energy. This protein is part of the pathway used to make fatty acids by Plasmodium yoelii, one of the protozoans that cause malaria in mice. Bacteria use a very similar protein so that they can grow and divide to produce new bacteria. Humans use a different pathway which doesn't include a protein like this to make fatty acids. By designing drugs to target such proteins, which bacteria and malaria parasites use and humans don't, it could be possible to develop antimalarial treatments and/or antibiotics that kill bacteria without harming their human hosts.

Fighting Cancer
Human WD repeat domain protein 5 (WDR5)
SGC Database number 2GNQ

WDR5 is one of the huge number of proteins in any cell whose job it is to switch genes on and off at the right times. The DNA in which our genes are encoded is wrapped around proteins called histones, and whenever a cell wants to turn on a gene it has to first unwrap them. WDR5 is one of the proteins that aid this unwrapping. In cancer, cells divide because the wrong genes are switched on or off. Since many of the genes that WDR5 helps to control are involved in shaping an animal as it grows, turning them on in an adult can mean new disorganised growth which can form a tumour.

Researching Drugs to Treat Malaria
PPWD1 from the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum
SGC Database number 2FU0

PPWD1 is a protein that helps other proteins fold into the correct shape as they are made. The human version is involved in cell division and is part of the immune system. Some drugs that are used to shut down the immune system - following transplant surgery, for example, or in patients with inflammation - act by forming a complex with PPWD1. This PPWD1 is taken from one of the protozoans that causes malaria in humans, called Plasmodium falciparum. Because this protein is so similar to the human version, drugs originally designed for use in humans target this protein in the Plasmodium and stop it working, thus potentially preventing the development of malaria.

Studying HIV
SGC Database number 2C46

Like any virus, HIV (which causes AIDS) takes over the machinery of a host cell in order to reproduce. One of the human proteins that it hijacks is Human Capping Enzyme 1. Normally this protein is involved in the process of using the instructions in human DNA to build other proteins. These instructions are copied into a portable form, called messenger RNA, and Human Capping Enzyme 1 modifies the messenger RNA, adding a chemical 'cap'. The cap signals to the cell that it needs to make a protein based on this RNA. HIV uses Human Capping Enzyme 1 to attach cap signals to its own RNA, tricking the human cell into making HIV proteins and helping the virus reproduce.

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