The Chemical Biology Core assists researchers in identifying and optimizing chemical probes and new lead compounds that can aid drug discovery & development and ultimately provide therapeutic benefit to cancer patients. The core is comprised of four functional units: Experimental High Throughput Screening Unit (Experimental HTS lab) Virtual HTS and Molecular Modeling Unit (Virtual HTS lab) Chemical Intermediates and Library Synthesis Unit (Chemistry lab) Protein Crystallography Unit (Protein Crystallography, being added recently) Over the last five years, the core developed the Protein Crystallography Unit, which provides all services needed from cloning the DNA sequence to determining the crystal structure. The addition of the Protein Crystallography Unit led to the renaming of the HTS & Chemistry core to Chemical Biology Core. In 2007, Moffitt recruited Ernst Schonbrunn, PhD, to lead this unit and serve as Co-Scientific Director with Dr. Guida. Under their joint leadership and due to the substantially increased demand for x-ray usage, additional equipment was acquired, including an upgraded X-ray generator in 2009. The Core requests CCSG Support of $363,941, which is 42% of its operational budget. Usage has grown to 22 active projects and Over 90% of usage is by Moffitt members and peer-reviewed.
The Chemical Biology core provides four fundamental services to enhance the research for Moffitt investigators that significantly impact the drug discovery process. Core has been highly successful in stimulating Cancer Center investigators grant applications in chemical biology approaches to cancer studies. In addition, the shared resource provides access to many kinds of equipment that are too expensive for the average laboratory to own individually.
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