COP partners with TGen on new drug discovery center

The National Institutes of Health has awarded a $7.5 million grant to the UA College of Pharmacy and Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) to fund a drug discovery and development center that puts renewed focus on the role of medicinal chemistry.

The grant, part of the federal economic recovery act, will enable rapid establishment of both key expertise and infrastructure in the field. Christopher Hulme, associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, is one of the principal investigators for the two-year grant.

The Southwest Comprehensive Center for Drug Discovery and Development will alleviate bottlenecks that exist between the laboratory-based discovery of promising therapeutic targets and the ultimate goal of delivering new, safe and effective drugs to address unmet medical needs of the patient, Hulme says.

The overall goal of the center is to assemble a translational medicinal chemistry team, capable of designing and selecting bona fide drug candidates, to respond quickly and efficiently when needed. The team’s rapid response is expected to cover a host of diseases including cancer, Alzheimer’s and heart disease and also events such as exposure to pathogens.

The grant will allow the College of Pharmacy to expand the number of medicinal chemistry investigators and infrastructure, primarily in Tucson, and TGen to expand its computational chemistry capabilities and high-throughput screening facilities in Phoenix through additional staff and equipment.

“This new center is a superb example of a successful public-private partnership,” Dean J. Lyle Bootman says. “The collaboration of the two organizations creates a synergy that permits a greatly expanded research effort.”

Plans for the drug discovery and development center include establishing a process to identify molecules of biological interest to reinvigorate drug discovery campaigns, centered on the initial construction of an “Arizona Compound Collection” of as many as 100,000 molecules.

“The center’s focus on medicinal chemistry provides the missing link in Arizona’s ability to deliver new therapeutic drugs to patients in a timely manner, and further strengthens the collaborative bond between TGen, UA and a host of our respective partners in translational medicine,’’ says Nathalie Meurice, TGen associate investigator and another of the three principal investigators for the award.

By employing a more industrialized and high-throughput approach to medicinal chemistry, the center expects to have a significant impact on health care.

“A plethora of Arizona-based innovative biological advances has set the stage for the establishment of the center and the award represents the successful culmination of 18 months of strategic planning between the College of Pharmacy and TGen to kick-start operations for this pivotal regional resource,” says Hulme.

Hulme will lead the center’s medicinal chemistry efforts and Meurice will lead its computational chemistry efforts. Spyro Mousses of TGen, also a principal investigator, will lead the high throughput screening efforts.

TGen and UA leaders expect the drug discovery and development center to promote the growth of local biotech by enabling discovery of early stage molecular probes, suitable for accelerated translation into effective, disease-modifying drugs.

“This partnership with the UA College of Pharmacy creates a first-class team that will tackle one of today’s pressing issues surrounding drug development, and is further proof the collaborative model continues to serve Arizona’s biomedical community well,” said Jeffrey Trent, TGen president and research director.

NIH reviewers called the management plan for the Southwest Comprehensive Center for Drug Discovery and Development “outstanding.”

“This proposal brings industrial scale pipeline efforts to a not-for-profit world and opens up a new avenue for creative discovery in academic science working in a more comprehensive, inclusive environment,” the review said.

The project described was supported by Award Number RC2MH090878 from the National Institute Of Mental Health. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute Of Mental Health or the National Institutes of Health.

About the principal investigators
The investigators each have expertise in critical sectors of the drug discovery pipeline, forming a collective team with complementary educational backgrounds and experiences.

Christopher Hulme joined the UA College of Pharmacy in 2007, with 15 years of experience in building and directing medicinal chemistry groups with three big pharmaceutical companies.

Nathalie Meurice contributed to collaborative drug discovery projects as a visiting scientist at the UA College of Pharmacy between 2004 and 2006, and then joined the TGen faculty in 2006. She trained in academia and industry, and brings over 10 years of experience in molecular modeling and chemical informatics.

Spyro Mousses currently directs the TGen Pharmaceutical Genomics Division, which has high throughput infrastructure and resources that will be leveraged by the center.

Photo: Christopher Hulme

Posted Oct.5, 2009