Aled Morgan Edwards (born June 1, 1962) is the founder and Chief Executive of the
Structural Genomics Consortium
The Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) is a public-private-partnership focusing on elucidating the functions and disease relevance of all proteins encoded by the human genome, with an emphasis on those that are relatively understudied. The SGC pl ...
, a charitable public-private partnership. He is Professor of Medical Genetics and Medical Biophysics at the
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...
, Visiting Professor of Chemical Biology at the
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...
, and adjunct professor at
McGill University
McGill University (French: Université McGill) is an English-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill University, Vol. I. For the Advancement of Learning, ...
.
Early life
Born in Holyhead,
Wales
Wales ( ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by the Irish Sea to the north and west, England to the England–Wales border, east, the Bristol Channel to the south, and the Celtic ...
, Edwards moved to Canada in 1965 with his parents Undeg and
Iwan Edwards, a choral conductor who was awarded the
Order of Canada
The Order of Canada () is a Canadian state order, national order and the second-highest Award, honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit.
To coincide with the Canadian Centennial, ce ...
in 1995 for his contributions to Canadian music.
Education
Edwards earned his
bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree (from Medieval Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six years ...
(1983) and his
Ph.D. (1988) in biochemistry from McGill University supervised by Peter Braun. He carried out post-doctoral studies at Stanford University in the laboratory of Roger Kornberg, where he first crystallized RNA polymerase II, a structure for which Kornberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2006.
Research contributions
From 1992 to 1997, while a professor at
McMaster University
McMaster University (McMaster or Mac) is a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main McMaster campus is on of land near the residential neighbourhoods of Ainslie Wood, Ontario, Ainslie Wood and Westdale, Ontario, Westd ...
, Edwards became interested in developing structural biology methods and was among the first to use
mass spectrometry
Mass spectrometry (MS) is an analytical technique that is used to measure the mass-to-charge ratio of ions. The results are presented as a ''mass spectrum'', a plot of intensity as a function of the mass-to-charge ratio. Mass spectrometry is used ...
to identify regions of proteins prone to crystallization. He used this technique to facilitate the
crystallography
Crystallography is the branch of science devoted to the study of molecular and crystalline structure and properties. The word ''crystallography'' is derived from the Ancient Greek word (; "clear ice, rock-crystal"), and (; "to write"). In J ...
of key proteins involved in DNA replication and repair before becoming interested in applying this and other methods to carry out
structural biology
Structural biology deals with structural analysis of living material (formed, composed of, and/or maintained and refined by living cells) at every level of organization.
Early structural biologists throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries we ...
on a proteome scale.
In 1997, now at the University of Toronto, Edwards, together with his colleague
Cheryl Arrowsmith, collaborated to launch one of the first projects in structural genomics, and soon published one of the papers that defined this new field. As a central player in the Protein Structure Initiative, their Toronto team contributed to more than a thousand new microbial protein structures over the next decade, developed new crystallization methods, and used structural methods to de-orphanize several nuclear receptors and study ion transport across membranes.
As of 2019, Edwards has co-contributed more datasets to the Protein Data Bank than any other scientist.
Business activities
In the late 1990s, Edwards co-founded and served as CEO of Borealis Biosciences and Chalon Biotech, which he merged to form Affinium Pharmaceuticals, a Toronto-based company. Affinium develope
afabicin a novel narrow-spectrum antibiotic that is now in clinical development a
DebioPharm Several other companies have been spun out of his research programs, includin
Harbinger Biotechnology and Engineering which was acquired b
Epiphyte3 and 1DegreeBio, which wa
acquiredby
LabX Media Group.
More recently, Edwards founded
M4K Pharma, a company that is developing a brain-penetrant drug targeting the ALK2 kinase, in order to treat children with incurable
diffuse-intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG). The novel open science business model being developed by M4K Pharma allows its science to be disclosed on an ongoing basis, and for any approved drug to be priced affordably. Edwards serves on the Board of the Agora Open Science Trust.
Open science and science policy
Open Science
Edwards is considered one of the pioneers of open science, particularly as it applied to biomedicine and drug discovery. Since 2003, all human protein structural information derived from the SGC has been placed into the public domain, prior to publication and without restriction on use. In 2007, he, together with Richard Gold, created the SGC Open Science Principles, under which the SGC became the first biomedical research organization to adopt open science principles that mandated sharing and eschewed patenting on any activity, including novel chemistry. In 2016, Edwards both spearheaded th
Open Lab Notebookinitiative, which now comprises over 20 scientists sharing their experiments as they are done, as well as collaborated with Guy Rouleau at the
Montreal Neurological Institute (The Neuro) to create the concept of an open research institute. That collaboration led to the formation of the Tanenbaum Open Science Institute, and to the broader institutional commitment of The Neuro to open science. In 2017, Edwards and colleagues conceptualized an open trust mechanism to share research reagents, and the SGC has been using this mechanism since. Edwards also helped launc
YCharOS Inc. an open science antibody characterization agency. In 2018, Edwards, Max Morgan and Owen Roberts launched the world’s first open science drug discovery company, M4K (Meds for Kids) Pharma, and developed a business model that is consistent with open science and affordable pricing. In 2019, Morgan and Edwards launched M4ND Pharma, to tackle neurological diseases using open drug discovery approaches. For his leadership role in promoting open access drug discovery, Edwards was named a Senior Ashoka Fellow in 2015.
Science and innovation policy
On the 10th anniversary of the publication of the draft sequence of the human genome, Edwards and colleagues were asked for their perspective. Their “Roads not Taken” paper, which quantified the “under-studied” parts of the human genome, has led to a number of funding initiatives, including the Illuminating the Druggable Genome initiative at the NIH, and presaged a number of studies that examine the unintended consequences of the peer-review system.
Edwards is a champion of science reproducibility, focusing considerable attention on the quality of research reagents and the need for transparent standards.
Edwards has also contributed to science communication; he served as the scientific advisor for the Gemini Award-winning television series
ReGenesis.
Awards
Dr Edwards was recently named as an Officer of the
Order of Canada
The Order of Canada () is a Canadian state order, national order and the second-highest Award, honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit.
To coincide with the Canadian Centennial, ce ...
for “advancing Canada’s global reputation as a leader in
open science
Open science is the movement to make scientific research (including publications, data, physical samples, and software) and its dissemination accessible to all levels of society, amateur or professional. Open science is transparent and accessib ...
research by founding the groundbreaking
Structural Genomics Consortium
The Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) is a public-private-partnership focusing on elucidating the functions and disease relevance of all proteins encoded by the human genome, with an emphasis on those that are relatively understudied. The SGC pl ...
.” He was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society
Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...
in 2024.
Personal
Edwards has been married to Elizabeth Edwards since 1985, and they have three children and five grandchildren. Elizabeth is director of BioZone and Professor of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry at the University of Toronto, an Officer of the Order of Canada, and winner of Canada’s 2016 Killam Prize for Engineering, among other awards. She is the daughter of Leonhard and
Jeanne Wolfe, who was awarded the Order of Canada in 2009 for her contributions to Canadian planning. Aled’s brother, Owain Edwards, is an entomologist at CSIRO in Australia.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Edwards, Aled
Academic staff of the University of Toronto
Living people
Canadian biochemists
Welsh emigrants to Canada
1962 births
People from Holyhead
Scientists from Toronto
Open science
Canadian social entrepreneurs
Officers of the Order of Canada
Fellows of the Royal Society