SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITIES

The scientific efforts of CMIDD are focused into two major categories: early stage medicinal chemistry, and targeted synthetic chemistry.  An important mission of CMIDD is to perform hit-to-lead chemistry* for researchers to help transform their biological discoveries into potential therapeutics.  Many of our activities utilize multiple Center resources for their successful execution and are aimed at advancing the goals of the collaborating scientists.

Medicinal Chemistry

• Hit-to-Lead chemistry, including:
• In silico hit clustering, physical property calculation, and ADMET prediction
• Development of structure-activity relationships (SAR) based on screening hits
• Design and synthesis of new scaffolds with improved drug-like properties
• Synthesis of small- to medium-sized focused libraries to identify compounds with improved physical and biological properties
• Virtual docking and development of pharmacophore and QSAR models

Synthetic Chemistry

• Small to Medium Scale synthesis of biologically relevant small molecules
• Synthesis of custom analogs of known compounds
• Assist researchers in identifying appropriate external CROs for large scale and/or unusually complex compound syntheses

* This work was funded by the Chicago Biomedical Consortium with support from The Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust.