The University of Pennsylvania is receiving $9.5 million from the National Institutes of Health during the next three
years to establish the Penn Center for Molecular Discovery. The Penn team will screen the NIH repository of small molecules
to discover new biological interactions.
Hundreds of thousands of molecules, collected and purified from natural sources or synthesized by chemists around the world,
will be tested against biological targets for inhibitory or activating activity. The Penn center is one of nine facilities
that the NIH is establishing across the country as part of the Molecular Library Screening Center Network.
"This initiative is comparable in scale and complexity to the Human Genome Project," said Scott Diamond, professor of
chemical and biomolecular engineering and director of the new center. "Small molecules come in an astronomically large
variety of shapes and sizes that dwarfs the number of genes in the human genome. Finding the important ones within the NIH
repository is a classic needle-haystack challenge, but we have robotic and biosensing tools that weren't available even a
decade ago."
Each of the new NIH centers will be screening the compound repository against unique targets of biological interest provided
by scientists around the country. The screening centers will create a massive, public-domain database where the interactions
of thousands of chemicals with scores of biological targets can be data-mined. Such tools have previously been available to
university researchers only in a very limited way at few sites.
"I can envision scientists around the world who study a disease or organism or a particular set of molecules downloading
information that would have normally taken years to obtain," Diamond said.
The Penn center has developed a very special capability to print thousands of molecules on a glass surface the size of a
business card and then test the molecules against proteases and other enzymes purified from human or animal cells, bacteria,
parasites, insects or viruses. As targets for drug development, proteases have proven critical to viral infection or
replication, cancer cell migration, inflammation and blood clotting.
"We can probe chemical-biological interactions in nanoliter volumes the size of a speck of dust," Diamond said.
Penn will also be able to test compounds in thousands of miniature wells each containing a millimeter-sized zebra fish, an
unlikely organism that has proven its worth in studies of heart or nerve function as well as in cancer biology because the
transparent fish is easily imaged.
When the researchers identify a new molecule that reacts to a specific target, the results will be added to a database open
to the public. Using the "hits" of the chemical screening, Amos Smith, a professor in Penn's Department of Chemistry, will
head the effort to create highly tailored, higher potency molecules useful in biological research, imaging and
pharmacological research.
"In time, these exciting new molecules with known biological activities will be a mouse-click away for chemists, biologists
and drug designers to use, all supported by an extensive database," Smith said. "This is really an exciting time for
chemistry at the interface with biology."
The Penn Center for Molecular Discovery will be housed at the Institute for Medicine and Engineering. The center represents a
truly multidisciplinary exercise, involving engineers with skills in robotics from Penn's School of Engineering and Applied
Sciences, chemists from Penn's School of Arts and Sciences and biomedical researchers from Penn's School of Medicine.
"The integration across Penn's campus is enhanced by its connectivity with the other centers in the national network,"
Diamond said. "This could have a stimulating effect on the pace of discovery by opening information up to anyone that might
have a great idea."
For more information, visit: seas.upenn/~pcmd
Contact: Greg Lester
glesterpobox.upenn
215-573-6604
University of Pennsylvania
upenn/pennnews
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