CLP was created in 2005 to stimulate interdisciplinary biomedical research across all of Northwestern’ s colleges, schools and hospitals. The Institute began programming in 2009 when its new home, The Richard and Barbara Silverman Hall of Molecular Therapeutics and Diagnostics, opened its doors. Since its inception, CLP has grown from a founding group of six faculty members, one staff person, and limited research support to more than 80 tenure-track faculty, 9 research faculty, 9 administrative staff, and 55 technical staff and research associates.

Today’s efforts build on a legacy of developing life-changing medicine. CLP is the home of Lyrica®, a blockbuster drug developed by CLP member Richard Silverman that has helped millions of patients manage fibromyalgia, seizures and nerve pain. Silverman is working to bring more promising new compounds developed in his lab to the clinic, including AKV9, the first-ever potential therapy to treat degenerating upper motor neurons that cause ALS.

Richard Silverman

Leveraging an unsurpassed capability to analyze proteins, CLP is launching the next era of precision medicine by discovering the changes in proteoforms that underlie disease, creating sensitive diagnostics to catch disease early, and identifying new targets for drug development and delivery.  CLP is already demonstrating the potential of proteomics to address compelling medical needs with protein-informed discoveries, such as:

• AKV9, a first-ever therapy for potential treatment of ALS cleared by the FDA for human studies
• A compound that shows promise against Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease
• New drugs targeting proteins involved in liver and pancreatic cancers
• Isolation of the proteins that protect against heart disease
• Identification of a protein signature in blood that signals the onset of liver transplant rejection
• A precise measure for assessing patient COVID-19 risk

CLP faculty develop new technology platforms that provide the biomedical research community with broad access to technology and expertise that accelerates research across the university. Once these platforms are mature they are embedded within the Institute’s six shared resource facilities or become the foundation for a new core facility.