Funding is requested for a 600-MHz NMR spectrometer to accommodate the solution state NMR needs of the NIH User Group comprised of seven established faculty in the UC Berkeley Department of Chemistry who in aggregate are funded by 20 major NIH grants. The new instrument will replace an outdated 500-MHz spectrometer (namely, a Bruker DRX-500, comprised of a 22-year old Oxford Instruments magnet and 10-year old electronics console). The NMR needs of the NIH User Group require the sensitivity and resolution provided by a 600-MHz magnet. The new instrument must accommodate the NIH User Group's broad range of NMR applications, calling for at least two different probes, namely, a triple-resonance broadband inverse probe for experiments that depend on high-sensitivity 1H detection and a broadband-observe probe for high-sensitivity direct detection of 13C and a variety of nuclei other than 1H. The 600-MHz NMR will greatly accelerate the science carried out by the research groups of ten faculty (seven major and three minor users) with funding from 24 distinct NIH grants. This research has clear, significant impact on human health, including the discovery and characterization of new therapeutic targets, the design and synthesis of small molecule ligands as the starting compounds for the development of drugs to treat serious human diseases, the development of nano-based delivery vehicles for drugs and vaccines, and the development of new sensitive chemical sensing methods for disease diagnosis and prognosis such as second generation MRI agents. ? ? ?
