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$20M grant to fight disease puts KU on leading edge

David McKinney/University Relations

Jeffrey Aube, professor of medicinal chemistry, answers questions at an event announcing a $20 million grant that will establish a specialized chemistry center at KU. The grant, the largest ever in Kansas, will fund research that searches for molecules with potential in fighting disease.

Thanks to a new six-year, $20.2 million research award from the National Institutes of Health, KU is joining a high-level network of institutions in the search for molecules that can fight disease and advance human health.

Specialized Chemistry Center team members

  • Brian Blagg, associate professor of medicinal chemistry and co-principal investigator
  • Apurba Dutta, associate professor of medicinal chemistry
  • Jun Huan, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science
  • Jeffrey Krise, associate professor of pharmaceutical chemistry
  • Gerald Lushington, associate scientist and director, Molecular Structures Group
  • Lester Mitscher, University Distinguished Professor of Medicinal Chemistry
  • Benjamin Neuenswander, senior research assistant, Higuchi Biosciences Center and assistant core director and analytical chemist, Chemical Methodologies and Library Development
  • Blake Peterson, Regents Distinguished Professor of Medicinal Chemistry
  • Thomas Prisinzano, associate professor of medicinal chemistry
  • Frank Schoenen, associate research professor, Higuchi Biosciences Center
  • Christian Schoeeneich, professor and chair of pharmaceutical chemistry
Consultants include KU alumnus Dale Boger, the Richard and Alice Cramer Professor of Chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, and Michael Rafferty, a pharmaceutical industry consultant in Olathe.

The grant is the largest federal research award ever made in Kansas. It will establish a Specialized Chemistry Center on KU's west campus in Lawrence for a research team led by Jeff Aube, professor of medicinal chemistry.

"What makes me excited about this is it puts KU right in the middle of some of the most forward-thinking biomedical research in the country," Aube said.

The award to KU is part of a new NIH Molecular Libraries Probe Production Centers Network. The network will be established at nine institutions throughout the United States, including the NIH Chemical Genomics Center, the Comprehensive Center for Chemical Probe Discovery and Optimization at Scripps, the Burnham Center for Chemical Genomics and the Broad Institute Comprehensive Screening Center at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. KU and Vanderbilt University are the only institutions awarded a Specialized Chemistry Center.

"The information generated by this network will be important to developing a greater understanding of biology and its complexity, while hopefully discovering novel approaches to therapies and prevention, especially for rare or neglected diseases," said Elias Zerhouni, director of NIH.

The network is a key element of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research, a multiyear initiative to address gaps in fundamental knowledge, develop new tools and technologies, and approach complex problems in innovative ways.

"The NIH is linking up a number of outstanding investigators throughout the country in order to focus their efforts on human health problems that can't be solved in just one lab," said Aube. "Within the network, chemists and biologists will be working together to develop ways of understanding basic human biology. They'll also figure out how to translate that understanding into real impacts on human health."

In a process called high-throughput screening, thousands of different molecules are tested to determine their potential effect on human biology, such as inhibiting an enzyme or changing a cell's behavior. The goal is to identify hits, or molecules that show some promise. These hits then undergo additional study at centers like the one at KU.

Aube compares the process to panning for gold.

"It's like you're out prospecting, looking for a nugget of gold hidden in a pile of gravel and sand," he said. "Back when, prospectors literally used a screen to filter away all the bad stuff. What was left might be a little gold nugget. In the lab, we'd call that a hit." Once hits are pinpointed, KU's Specialized Chemistry Center will produce chemical probes -- molecules based on hits that are engineered to be more efficient in their desired function.

"A hit will typically be pretty good at what you want it to do," Aube said. "Our job is to make it great at what we want it to do. For the probe, that's basically taking the gold nugget and turning it into something really wonderful -- like a gold ring."

Already having essential people and facilities gave KU's proposal an edge in the competition for funding. KU's Center for Research provided seed money to begin hiring needed researchers earlier this year. The new center will be housed in the third phase of the Structural Biology Center, which opened in June.

"This has truly been a great year for KU," said Chancellor Robert Hemenway. "Today's announcement is one more achievement on a long list, one more reason for everyone to take pride in this university. Research is fundamental to our academic mission. A national award of this magnitude confirms KU's ability to compete with the very best in the lab, the classroom and everywhere else."

Aube said the new center will involve more than 20 people at KU, including faculty members, support scientists and postdoctoral researchers. It will build on work already being done at the Structural Biology Center in KU's NIH-funded Center of Excellence in Chemical Methodologies and Library Development, which Aube directs and which collaborates with other screening groups throughout the country, including KU's High-Throughput Screening Lab.

Under the award, KU expects to add 15 to 20 new grant-funded positions, and to expand its compound purification systems and purchase other specialized equipment.

Go to www.oread.ku.edu to see a list of Specialized Chemistry Center team members.

RESEARCH MATTERS:

RESEARCH MATTERS: Daphne Fautin, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, is a commissioner for the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. "It's the Supreme Court of zoological nomenclature. We make decisions not on whether a particular species is really valid, whether it exists or not - that's a subject of scientific debate. But whether it has followed the rules, the laws the international code of scientific nomenclature so that it can be considered scientifically available and it actually applies to an entity that we can identify," Fautin said. For more, visit www.researchmatters.ku.edu.