There is a significant unmet medical need to develop pharmacotherapeutics for auditory disorders. Yet, few academic centers in the world are dedicated to these efforts. With a strong focus on pharmacotherapeutics for such disorders in the Translational Hearing Center (THC), our Drug Discovery & Delivery Core (DDDC) aims to establish a state-of-the-art drug development pipeline to facilitate individual research projects in THC. We will leverage projects developed by Research Project Leaders (RPLs) and allied Center Investigators to significantly advance the field of pharmacotherapeutics for auditory disorders. Our DDDC will mentor and train the next generation of hearing researchers and attract new investigators to contribute to this fast advancing field. During Phase 1, DDDC will: 1) develop in silico, in vitro and in vivo high-throughput screens to discover and validate novel therapeutics for auditory disorders; 2) establish a medicinal chemistry pipeline to optimize chemical entities used in research projects or discovered in 1 or in RPLs); 3) establish drug delivery and pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) methodologies; 4) develop a sustainability plan for DDDC services. With strong commitment from Creighton University and neighboring institutes (Boys Town National Laboratory and University of Nebraska Medical Center), the DDDC has already established nearly all necessary equipment and expert personnel. The Director and Co-Directors of DDDC have extensive experience in drug development for auditory disorders, medicinal chemistry and computational structural studies. The sustained impact of the DDDC will be to build a state-of-the-art and highly collaborative center so that additional extramural grants and sponsored programs will gradually cover the main cost of DDDC. We will also emphasize the educational component so that new investigators will become familiar with this fast-moving field of ototherapeutics and maintain the momentum for years to come.
