TWO institutes directed by Nobel laureates Arieh Warshel and Brian Kobilka were inaugurated at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) yesterday morning, with the university's president and officials from Longgang District and municipal governments in attendance.
One of the institutes is named the Arieh Warshel Institute of Computational Biology, while the other will focus on R&D for a new drug led by Kobilka. These are the university's first two labs led by Nobel laureates and are expected to help the university better cultivate its students, said university president Xu Yangsheng.
The two Nobel Prize winners will be honorary directors of the institutes and will be involved in research, teaching and sharing academic research results with the students at the university.
In a speech delivered at yesterday's inauguration ceremony, Warshel said that Shenzhen's fast-paced development had caught his attention and eventually convinced him to set up a lab in the city.
"Last year when I came to Shenzhen I used a moving walkway, and I thought these go much faster here than anywhere else I have ever been," said Warshel. "That spirit of velocity and purpose stayed with me throughout my time here ... I realized that the uniquely fast-paced moving walkways are a metaphor for the speed of progress in your university and your city."
Computational biology has advanced tremendously in the last 50 years since Warshel and his colleagues pioneered protein modeling. The simulations they pioneered allowed them to unlock the secrets of different levels of life phenomena, said Warshel.
"This includes the potential of drug designing that is based on deeper understanding than blind experiments. Because disease-causing molecules, or pathogens, can change randomly, it is unclear to scientists what the next target for new pharmaceuticals will be."
Through his work with computers, Warshel said that they are able to simulate drug resistance on a molecular level and create medications to which the pathogens will not be able to easily adapt.
"I have the vision that this institute of computational biology would serve as a platform to attract top-class researchers worldwide to join and contribute in this arena. It will also lead to key international collaborations and become a multi-disciplinary education hub to nurture young computation biologists," said the honorary director.
Kobilka also spoke about his lab yesterday. His vision is an innovative center for drug discovery that brings together the brightest, most creative young scientists in the disciplines of receptor structural biology, computational and medicinal chemistry, physiology and pharmacology.
An important component of the center will be the establishment of a recruitment and promotional system that encourages risk-taking and innovation, according to the winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. "The groups will work together to establish a priority list for drug targets based on unmet medical needs."
There has been a trend in recent years of world-known Nobel laureates setting up labs or research centers in Shenzhen. For instance, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Barry Marshall, led a medical team to set up an international clinic for gastro-intestinal diseases in Dapeng New Area last year.
The co-discoverer of the structure of DNA and Nobel Prize winner, James Watson, also showed an interest in cooperating with the Shenzhen Municipal Government in setting up a Watson Research Center of Life Science in Shenzhen when he attended a medicine summit in the city last week.
Kobilka, 62, is an American physiologist and a recipient of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Robert Lefkowitz for discoveries that reveal the inner workings of an important family G protein-coupled receptors.
Warshel, 77, is an Israeli-American biochemist and biophysicist. A pioneer in computational studies on functional properties of biological molecules, he received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Michael Levitt and Martin Karplus.