Southern Research Receives National Grant for Drug Discovery as One of Nine Research Centers in the NIH Roadmap Molecular Libraries Initiative
BIRMINGHAM, Ala., June 17 /PRNewswire/ — The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced $88.9 million in grant awards to establish a collaborative research network that will use robotic high-throughput screening methods to identify small molecule probes as tools for new drug discovery. Southern Research was one of nine U.S. research organizations selected to participate in the NIH Roadmap Molecular Libraries initiative to support multidisciplinary medical research.
Southern Research, with an established track record of having discovered six of the FDA approved anti-cancer drugs on the market, will operate the Southern Research Molecular Libraries Screening Center (SRMLSC), receiving an estimated $11.6 million in NIH grant support during the three-year period. Gary A. Piazza, Ph.D., a pharmacologist and manager of Cell Biology and Immunology at Southern Research, will serve as the principal investigator for the SRMLSC project and will lead biological studies. Joseph A. Maddry, Ph.D., a chemist and director of Organic Chemistry, will lead the chemistry and informatics effort. Piazza and Maddry are both senior research scientists in the renowned Drug Discovery and Development Divisions at Southern Research.
“Now that the human genome has been sequenced, small molecules will provide valuable tools to probe the biological function of new genes at the cellular level,” said Piazza. “This is an exciting new opportunity that will escalate drug discovery by providing insight about how proteins can be pharmacologically controlled in disease processes.”
“The human genome initiative supplied us with the foundation of genes and proteins that are medically important,” said Maddry. “This screening effort is the next logical step, allowing us to identify small molecules that affect these proteins in certain specific ways. Then the chemists will use this information to design related compounds with more drug-like properties.”
Small molecules offer great potential to help scientists in their efforts to learn more about key biological pathways that are involved in human health and disease and should lead to safer and more effective drugs for the treatment and prevention of a range of disorders such as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. The Molecular Libraries Screening Centers Network is being developed through the NIH Roadmap for medical research. Specifically, the network is part of the Roadmap’s “New Pathways to Discovery” initiative, which has set out to advance the understanding of biological systems and build a better “toolbox” for medical researchers in the 21st century.
“This tremendous collaborative effort will accelerate our understanding of biology and disease mechanisms,” said Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., NIH Director. “More importantly, it will, for the first time, enable academic researchers to explore novel ideas and enable progress on a broad front against human disease.”
Data generated from the high-throughput assays conducted at the screening centers will be made available to researchers in both the public and private sectors through the PubChem database, created and managed by the National Library of Medicine at NIH.
The eight other institutions who received grants as part of the Molecular Libraries Screening Centers Network (MLSCN) include: Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY; Emory University, Atlanta, Ga.; The Burnham Institute, La Jolla, Calif.; The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, Calif.; the University of New Mexico Albuquerque, Albuquerque, NM; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.; the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pa.; and Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn.
ABOUT SOUTHERN RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Alabama-based, full-service contract research organization Southern Research provides quality essential services in preclinical drug discovery and development for a wide range of diseases. With six FDA-approved drugs and another four in clinical trials, Southern Research continues to demonstrate research excellence and partnering value in the search for tomorrow’s breakthrough discoveries. Visit www.southernresearch.org or call 1-800-967-6774. Look for Southern Research in the Alabama Pavilion (Booth #1349) at the BIO 2005 Annual International Convention in Philadelphia, June 19-22, 2005.
ABOUT THE NIH ROADMAP FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH
The NIH Roadmap is a series of new initiatives designed to pursue major opportunities and gaps in biomedical research that no single NIH institute could tackle alone but which the agency as a whole can address to make the biggest impact possible on the progress of medical research and to catalyze changes that will serve to transform new scientific knowledge into tangible benefits for public health. Additional information about the NIH Roadmap can be found at its Web site, www.nihroadmap.nih.gov . For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov .
