Convergence Research Initiatives
CLP Convergence Initiatives initiatives unite clinical and basic science researchers to propel new protein-based discoveries and apply them to the most intractable medical challenges.
Conquering Neurodegenerative Diseases and Cancer
CLP has set aggressive goals to conquer diseases that have a compelling clinical need by developing new proteoform signatures of health and disease across multiple tissue types and disease mechanisms.To achieve its bold mission, CLP has developed a series of Convergence Research Initiatives which bring together Northwestern chemists, life scientists, and engineers with clinicians in Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine (FSM) to provide a holistic approach to critical clinical problems that stretch from the lab bench to the patient bedside. Convergence Initiatives propel CLP towards clinical impact by enabling team members to jointly conceptualize how protein-based discovery can be applied to unresolved medical challenges.
Over the next five years, CLP will address neurodegenerative diseases, including ALS, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, and cancer. Building on our success in drug discovery with advanced proteomic platforms, interdisciplinary teams of CLP investigators and clinicians will identify more precise targets and develop more sensitive diagnostics that might lead to earlier diagnosis and potential treatment for these diseases. These efforts will advance technical and program readiness for major federal and foundation funding and pave the way for an expanded focus to include kidney disease, transplant rejection, liver disease and cirrhosis.
How It Works
Pilot Funding
CLP provides pilot funding (backed by generous donors) for dream teams of CLP’s medicinal chemists, chemical biologists, pharmacologists and Feinberg clinicians focused on neurodegenerative diseases and cancer.
Proteoform Identification
Researchers analyze tissue and blood obtained through collaboration with FSM researchers using top-down mass spectrometry methods to determine the unique proteoform signatures of these diseases.
Drug Development
CLP integrates platforms for chemical proteomics for target identification, validation, and engagement with proteoform target mapping, then deploys its medicinal chemistry capabilities to advance candidate small molecules.
Convergence Workshops
CLP hosts annual workshops that provides an opportunity for CLP’s technology innovators, researchers and clinicians to share their most exciting translational research and technologies for drug and diagnostic development. The online program introduces investigators to cutting-edge physical sciences approaches and technologies developed by CLP faculty and clinically relevant, envelope-pushing biomedical research underway at Feinberg.
In this workshop, CLP and Lurie Cancer researchers discussed innovative cancer epigenetics research and methods and opportunities for collaboration.
This workshop featured lightening talks by CLP faculty researchers and Feinberg physician-scientists and a vigorous exchange of ideas and several new research collaborations.
“CLP creates an environment where great minds unite. Neurodegenerative diseases are very complex, so that’s why we need to approach them from multiple different angles.”
Hande Ozdinler, PHD
Associate Professor, Neurology
“What happens with physicists, chemists, geneticists, cancer biologists meet? A future without cancer starts to become a reality.”
Marcelo bonini, phd
Professor, Medicine (Hematology and Oncology), Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics
