John S. Dunn Foundation’s $2.7 Million Grant
Will Boost Drug Discovery
at Gulf Coast Institutions
HOUSTON – (Nov. 9, 2006) – The John S. Dunn Foundation has made a gift of $2.7 million to support the acquisition of sophisticated robotics and large collections of chemical compounds and molecular reagents to support drug discovery research by investigators from six Gulf Coast institutions.
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston will serve as the project’s lead institution on behalf of the Gulf Coast Consortia (GCC), a collaborative alliance for interdisciplinary bioscience training and research composed of Baylor College of Medicine, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Rice University, the University of Houston, The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and UT-Houston.
“This special gift from the Dunn Foundation will propel the research within our GCC institutions forward in new ways and open novel experimental avenues to our investigators across the region,” said Kathleen Matthews, Ph.D., GCC Oversight Committee chair and dean of Natural Sciences at Rice University. “We are deeply appreciative of the on-going support of the Dunn Foundation in our GCC research programs.”
The program will be known as the John S. Dunn Gulf Coast Consortium for Chemical Genomics. It will jump-start the work of scientists at all of the participating GCC institutions by helping to provide the infrastructure, equipment, genomics libraries and seed grants necessary to speed new drug discoveries.
“This support from the Dunn Foundation will enable the Gulf Coast Consortia to put in place an academic drug discovery program that will speed the translation of basic research discoveries into new avenues for the treatment of human diseases,” said UT-Houston Executive Vice President for Research Peter J. A. Davies, M.D., Ph.D.
Davies also is director of the John S. Dunn Gulf Coast Consortium for Chemical Genomics. “Such collaborative initiatives as these are helping to bring about a major transformation in the framework for biological and biomedical research in our region that will serve as a national model for the research teams of the future,” Davies said.
UT-Houston also will be the home of the hub laboratory for the drug discovery program, where state-of-the-art robotics, instrumentation and computer technology will be employed for rapid screening of chemical compounds to identify drugs that may act on the molecular “targets” known to be associated with specific diseases. The screening center will be located on the third floor of the UT Medical School’s new $80.5-million research building, now under construction at 6431 Fannin St.
“Functional genomic screening will revolutionize the way we identify new targets for drugs to treat cancer and other major diseases. It is a technology available to relatively few research organizations and we are very lucky to have the support of the Dunn Foundation,” said Garth Powis, D.Phil., chairman of the Department of Experimental Therapeutics and director of the Center for Targeted Therapy at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.
Five GCC satellite centers will each receive funding to purchase robotics and detection systems for compatible research projects at GCC partner campuses.
“The Dunn Foundation gift also helps us to robustly launch the hub-n-spoke model, with funds to support multiple satellite laboratories to enable assay development throughout the GCC,” said Michael A. Mancini, Ph.D., co-director of the John S. Dunn Gulf Coast Consortium for Chemical Genomics.
Mancini’s group at Baylor College of Medicine was the lead laboratory in pioneering high throughput single cell studies gene transcription, using novel microscopy-based technologies. “Not only is large-scale screening now a possibility, one cannot overestimate the new advantages of higher throughput approaches at the standard bench level,” Mancini said.
“University of Houston researchers in pharmaceutical design are excited about the potential of having a local screening center available. The center will foster a great many interdisciplinary investigations leading to drugs of the future,” said UH Professor of Chemistry B. Montgomery Pettitt, Ph.D., chairman of the Keck Center for Interdisciplinary Bioscience Training, who has been affiliated with the GCC since its formation.
The Dunn Foundation award includes $500,000 in seed funding to support innovative, early-stage pilot projects, particularly from young investigators who are doing the cutting-edge groundwork needed for developing biomedical treatments that will reverse or prevent diseases.
These pilot grants for “Discovery Project” pilot grants will enable researchers to gather the preliminary data required for successful applications for peer-reviewed funding and publication. Academic drug discovery programs like the GCC’s seek to offset research-and-development expenditures by the pharmaceutical industry ($35 billion in 2005) by involving public-sector players more in the early phases of drug discovery. Ultimately, academic scientists and researchers may shorten the time needed for drug discoveries, develop truly new drugs for a broader range of diseases and lower the costs of pharmaceuticals so savings can be passed on to consumers and health care providers.
“It is a growing trend among top-tier research universities across the nation to establish academic drug discovery programs that accelerate the translation of basic research discoveries into the development of new therapies, said UT-Houston Executive Vice President for Molecular Medicine and Genetics C. Thomas Caskey, chairman of the GCC Chemical Genomics Executive Committee. “We believe that the leadership of our regional Gulf Coast universities in biological and biomedical research both in Texas and nationally will benefit greatly from a comparable commitment to this emerging area of research.”
In 2005 the Dunn Foundation awarded the GCC more than $1.8 million to purchase two of the most powerful nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometers in the United States.
“This gift continues the generous support of the Dunn Foundation to the Gulf Coast Consortia,” said David G. Gorenstein, Ph.D., director of the John S. Dunn, Sr. Gulf Coast Consortium for Magnetic Resonance and associate dean for research at UTMB’s School of Medicine.
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