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KU biomedical research lab receives five-year, $9.5 million grant renewal
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas is receiving another major boost for its already strong research programs in medicinal chemistry.
The National Institutes of Health has announced the renewal of an existing grant to KU, one that will enable a team of researchers to enhance and expand their work in a vital field of biomedicine.
The new five-year award is for $9.5 million, extending the original $9.5 million grant awarded in 2003. The funding supports KU’s Center of Excellence in Chemical Methodologies and Library Development. The facility is housed in KU’s new Structural Biology Center and is led by Jeff Aubé, professor of medicinal chemistry.
“Obtaining the original grant was a breakthrough event for KU,” said Aubé. “It enabled us to launch the CMLD and participate in this research at a national level. Since then, we’ve exceeded our goals and we just moved into a great new facility. Renewal of a major grant is competitive and nothing’s guaranteed. The new award is an indicator of NIH’s confidence in the program and the people here at KU, as well as the results.”
Libraries made of molecules
According to the NIH announcement, “Libraries of small molecules are a crucial source of potential new drugs and research tools. Yet existing collections — and the techniques needed to generate them — fail to meet all the needs of pharmaceutical and biomedical scientists.”
A center for chemical methodologies and library development addresses this problem by developing new technologies to generate, analyze and improve chemical libraries.
“A chemical library is just a large collection of molecules,” said Aubé. “The goal is to create these libraries quickly and then evaluate them efficiently. We’re looking for molecules with the greatest drug potential for addressing specific diseases. It’s complex and difficult work. The equipment and staffing provided by the NIH grant is what makes this possible.”
The new funding will enable the Center of Excellence in Chemical Methodologies and Library Development at KU to continue its ongoing work and also introduce a technique known as “flow chemistry” that is more automated than traditional batch methods of creating compounds.
“Instead of pouring chemicals into a flask and heating them up, the compounds flow continuously through tubes,” said Aubé, “This is a novel approach, and it’s ideal for CMLD work.”
KU is in good company with this initiative. The NIH renewed funding this fall for three of its other existing CMLD centers: Boston University, the University of Pittsburgh and the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. A fifth center was awarded to a consortium located at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University and the University of Illinois-Chicago.
KU’s growing national reputation
The outcomes of research conducted in the chemical methodologies and library development center will potentially benefit patients with cancer and a wide range of other diseases. In the short term, however, the work provides a valuable teaching opportunity.
For example, one of Aube’s graduate students, Jennifer Treece, spent last spring working on a collaborative project between KU and colleagues at Boston University. There she learned new techniques, such as flow chemistry, and spent time in its CMLD facility. Treece is a graduate of Pittsburgh and was already familiar with its CMLD.
“Going to Boston was a good experience for me professionally,” said Treece, who chose the doctoral program at KU because of its national reputation in medicinal chemistry. “It gave me a different spin on how another CMLD operates. Everything I’ve learned at Boston and Pitt will help as we expand the CMLD capabilities at KU.”
Directors and staff of the five NIH-funded CMLD centers will gather in Lawrence next week for their annual meeting, said Aubé.
“It’s a working meeting for about 50 people from the five universities,” said Aubé. “Each of us presents a report and we discuss common concerns. This group has never before met in Lawrence, so it gives us an opportunity to show off KU, our CMLD and the new Structural Biology Center.”
Ties to the NIH Roadmap
A strength of the NIH initiative is that new methods and resources developed at the CMLDs are broadly available for biomedical research and drug discovery. Each CMLD feeds its chemical libraries to the NIH Molecular Libraries Probe Production Centers Network, which will screen them in its search for chemical probes to study human biology. In September, it was announced that Aubé will lead a KU team in creating a Specialized Chemistry Center that is part of this “NIH Roadmap” network, funded by a separate five-year, $20.2 million NIH award.
In addition to Aubé, other key KU personnel involved in the CMLD renewal are:
— Paul R. Hanson, chemistry
— Gerald H. Lushington, Molecular Structures Group
— Helena C. Malinakova, chemistry
— Ben Neuenswander, Higuchi Biosciences Center and CMLD
— Frank J. Schoenen, Higuchi Biosciences Center and CMLD
— Jon A. Tunge, chemistry
— Todd D. Williams, Molecular Structures Group
They are joined by researchers from three other universities:
— Keith R. Buszek, chemistry, University of Missouri-Kansas City
— Richard C. Larock, chemistry, Iowa State University
— Michael Organ, chemistry, York University (Canada)
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