Center for Molecular Innovation and Drug Discovery (CMIDD)
Co-Director: Raymond Bergan
, M.D.
Director of Operations and Outreach: Terri Fraterrigo
Location: Silverman Hall B550A
&
3530
Website: http://www.cmidd.northwestern.edu/
Overview:
Northwestern University’s Center for Molecular Innovation and Drug Discovery (CMIDD), a new and enlarged version of the former Center for Drug Discovery and Chemical Biology, promotes an interdisciplinary approach to drug discovery that researchers hope will lead to effective new therapeutics to combat cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and a host of other medical conditions.
Northwestern has teamed up with the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago to build a state-of-the-art chemical library that will help identify new molecular compounds for drug discovery and store them in an accessible and systematic way. The three universities recently received a $9.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health and a $2 million Lever grant from the Chicago Biomedical Consortium to establish the Chicago Tri-Institutional Center for Chemical Methods and Library Development.
“What happens is that biologists have great ideas about some pathway to finding a new treatment, but they don’t have any way to make the compounds that they want to use,” said Scheidt. “They can call a chemical supply company, but then they are at the mercy of what’s available there.” Scheidt also says the creation of small molecule collections, or chemical libraries, will put CMIDD’s interdisciplinary vision into practice by bringing chemists together with biologists to create tailor-made compounds for future drug discovery. These compounds then will be stored locally and linked to a searchable database.
The chemical library is just one piece of the enterprise that CMIDD will build at Northwestern. The plan is to develop a center that coordinates and drives all small-molecule research with therapeutic purposes at the University.
Fellman, Megan (10 June 2009). “High Hopes for New Drug Discovery Center.” Northwestern University Newscenter http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/index.html Retrieved 24 Sept. 2009.