Mission

The mission of the Consortium for Functional Glycomics is to provide a networking forum and glycomics resources that enable investigators to reveal functions of glycans and glycan-binding proteins that impact human health and disease.

Structure & Governance

The CFG comprises three major components: the Steering Committee, the Scientific Cores, and the Participating Investigators. Each major component of the CFG interacts directly with the other two.

Steering Committee
The Steering Committee, led by Richard Cummings at Emory University, sets the scientific direction of the CFG and ensures that information and resources generated by the program are disseminated efficiently within the consortium and to the public.

Scientific Cores
The CFG currently has two Scientific Cores, the Bioinformatics Core (formerly Core B) and the Protein-Glycan Interaction Core (formerly Core H). Each core is overseen by a coordinator and a core director who is responsible for the core's day-to-day operations.

The Bioinformatics Core provides the community with integrated databases and specialized analytical tools to advance glycomics research and facilitate data mining. These resources are freely available through the CFG's Web site, the CFG Functional Glycomics Gateway, which offers information about glycans, glycan-binding proteins, and glycosyltransferases.

The Protein-Glycan Interaction Core screens glycan-binding proteins and other samples for binding to hundreds of diverse mammalian glycans on a slide-based glycan microarray created by the CFG. As well as the core facilities, the CFG maintains a Reagent Bank of glycans, antibodies, and enzymes. Resource requests for glycan array screening or materials from the Reagent Bank may be submitted online.

From 2001 to 2011, the CFG also created and distributed mutant mouse strains and offered glyco-gene microarray screening, glycan profiling, and mutant mouse phenotyping services.

Participating Investigators
The third component of the CFG is comprised of the Participating Investigators, each of whom has a program of funded research within the scope of the consortium. In return for resources, Participating Investigators agree to accept responsibility for submitting resulting data to the CFG database. Investigators interested in joining the CFG as a Participating Investigator are encouraged to fill out an application posted on the CFG Web site. All qualified investigators are accepted as members.

Participating Investigators are divided into Subgroups based on the relevance of their research to the GBP families that are the focus of the CFG. These Subgroups foster communication and collaboration among investigators working on common problems, and help the CFG define priorities in order to accelerate progress in specific sub-fields.

Intellectual Property

Inventions. Working within the timing constraints of placing program information into the public domain, member institutions may seek intellectual property protection for technology and data obtained in this project. Participating Investigators that file invention disclosures that result from collaborative research will be expected to disclose the collaborative nature of the research and the names of the other Participating Investigators and their institutions. Inventorship will be determined by U.S. law. Title to inventions will be determined by the inventor's obligation to assign to their employers. In accordance with 37CFR401, no member institution shall assign their rights to any third party.

Research license. Each member institution will grant to participating institutions and any other nonprofit institution a non-exclusive, non-royalty bearing, non-transferable license for purposes of non-commercial research, to all intellectual property developed in performance of this program. Title holders to intellectual property will be encouraged to license their intellectual property rights, when appropriate, and in compliance with the National Institution of Health (NIH) guidelines, to non-participating third parties for purposes of developing commercial products and public benefit.

Pre-existing intellectual property rights. The Steering Committee has discussed and determined that they are not aware of any pre-existing intellectual property rights of the participating institutions that would impede or compromise the performance of this research program.

Resolution of disputes. All disputes between participating institutions involving intellectual property will be resolved by alternative dispute resolution. The arbitrators shall be mutually agreed upon by the parties involved in the dispute.

Our Institution agrees to have the above stated plan included in the application for the Large-Scale collaborative Project (U54) / Legacy Community-Wide Scientific Resources (R24).

Data Sharing

The extensive data sets that have resulted from the use of CFG resources are publicly available through the consortium Web site, and include results from glycan array screening, glycogene microarray screening, mouse phenotyping, and glycan profiling experiments. The Web site also offers access to the CFG Molecule Pages, which provide detailed information about glycan structures, GBPs, and glycosyltransferases.

Sponsors & Partners