The Chemical Biology Core facility helps researchers identify and optimize chemical probes and new chemical compounds that can aid drug discovery and development. New drugs created from these will ultimately provide new therapies to cancer patients.
The Core is comprised of four functional units.
The Experimental Screening Unit assists researchers in identifying compounds that can be developed into drug candidates and also chemical probes that target the researcher’s protein of interest. Specific services include:
- Assay development
- Screening
- Lead development
- Kinetic analysis
The Virtual Screening and Modeling Unit assists researchers through computational docking of large numbers of 3D structures of small molecules into target binding sites.
The Synthetic/Medicinal Chemistry Unit assists investigators in medicinal chemistry, resynthesis, multigram scale resynthesis of lead compounds for advanced in-vivo/animal studies, and synthesis of chemical building blocks to create chemical libraries. The unit also provides analytical services for structure and purity conformation of possible chemical targets.
The Protein Crystallography Unit provides comprehensive services and technologies for generating high resolution structural information on crystals and the intellectual background for interpretation of that structural information. The service assists the design of new compounds. The unit also provides members with a unique environment to integrate structural biological approaches into their research programs by making use of experimentally determined structural models. The unit offers the services necessary to determine the atomic structure of proteins by X-ray crystallography. Specific services include:
- Cloning
- Protein purification
- Biochemical and biophysical characterization
- Protein crystallization
- Data collection and structure determination