Business Concentrates SCIENCE COMMUNICATION
Scientists, funders flock to ResearchGate Networking site gathers momentum in quest for open science ResearchGate, a scientific networking website, says it continues to grow strongly. The organization now boasts connections to more than 100 million publications, 12 million researchers, and 1 million answers to research questions. Akin to a LinkedIn for scientists, ResearchGate claims 840,000 members who are primarily chemists, up from 270,000 in 2013. The Berlin-based company disclosed this week that in November 2015 it raised $53 million in a fourth round of funding from organizations including the Wellcome Trust, Goldman Sachs, and wealthy individuals such as Bill Gates. That follows a $35 million investment by Gates and others in 2013. The 2015 investment enabled ResearchGate to begin an initiative called Projects, through which scientists update peers and the wider world about their ongoing research. Since the inception of Projects, scientists have begun sharing data on more than half a million active studies, ResearchGate says.
PEOPLE
Big network What fields do ResearchGate’s 12 million members come from?
Other 40%
Physics 4% Computer science 6%
Medicine 15% Biology 14% Engineering 14% Chemistry 7%
Source: ResearchGate
“Like other research results, scientific data will be included in researchers’ profiles, enabling collaboration and discovery,” Ijad Madisch, ResearchGate’s CEO and cofounder, says about Projects. “ResearchGate will become the hub for scientific data online.” The organization says its activities reflect the scientific community’s shift away
from siloed experimentation and toward network-driven collaboration. “With its member network of 12 million individuals, ResearchGate has clearly become the dominant player driving that collaboration,” says Ian Friedman, head of Goldman Sachs’s venture capital team. But the network’s online sharing model can introduce conflicts. “ResearchGate members can upload copyrighted, peer-reviewed journal articles, and in some cases, this could breach copyright law,” says Stephanie Dawson, CEO of ScienceOpen, a networking platform that also promotes open science. ResearchGate, though, asserts that it encourages its members to check with the publisher when they are unsure about copyright and that it can readily disable access to content if any infringement occurs. ScienceOpen takes another tack. Rather than allow its members to upload content, the organization works with scientific publishers to encourage them to share papers or at least some of the papers’ underlying scientific data. In this way, ScienceOpen can create a context-rich environment for users, Dawson says.—ALEX SCOTT
START-UPS
Evonik names new CEO Christian Kullmann, 47, will replace Klaus Engel, 60, as Evonik Industries’ chair and CEO at the big German chemical maker’s annual shareholder meeting on May 23. Engel, who is stepping down before his term ends, says Evonik’s 10th anniversary is a fitting time for him to depart. BASF executive Harald Schwager, 56, will join Evonik on Sept. 1 as deputy CEO.
12
C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | MARCH 6, 2017
With $38 million in funding from a range of investors, Arrakis Therapeutics has formally launched to create a new class of drugs: small molecules that directly bind to RNA. Led by biotech veteran Michael Gilman, Arrakis is chasing the vast number of “undruggable” targets that have frustrated the industry. Medicinal chemists primarily design small molecules that bind to active sites on cellular proteins. But sometimes those pockets are inaccessible. Arrakis thinks it can access the vexing targets by going after the RNA transcripts for the protein, rather than the protein itself. Compared to proteins, RNA is dynamic. “Let’s say a messenger RNA is floating around the cytoplasm,” Gilman explains. “It’s flip-flopping and sampling lots of different structures.” The right small molecule could lock into an
RNA structure and keep it from performing its duties. To find those small molecules, Arrakis’s founder and chief scientific officer, Russell C. Petter, an organic chemist who previously worked with Gilman at Biogen, developed two platforms: a bioinformatics tool for identifying sites on RNA where small molecules can latch and a set of chemical biology tools for validating the efficacy and selectivity of small molecules. Used in tandem, Gilman says, they should yield drug candidates. Arrakis is focused on three therapeutic areas: neurology, oncology, and rare genetic disorders. Although the company has thus far relied on contract research organizations, it is now moving into labs in Waltham, Mass., “and will build out a strong bench-level scientific team,” Gilman says.—LISA JARVIS
CREDIT: EVONIK
Arrakis launches to target RNA
