In this proposal, a group of eight faculty members in the chemical sciences at the University of Kansas are requesting a shared 500 megahertz nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer. They all receive funding from various institutes of the NIH. A major theme within the group is developing better ways to synthesize small druglike molecules, or improve the specificity and potency of biologically active compounds which may be drug leads. Other research within the group includes bioactive peptides which may have applications in improved pain relief, and determining the structures of proteins from disease-causing bacteria and viruses. NMR is a key tool to characterize the new compounds being made, verify their identity, and understand their properties. The proposed instrument would become part of a core facility in which nearly 38,000 small molecule samples were analyzed in the last year, and timely access to results has become a significant limitation on the ongoing research. The relevance of the research the proposed instrument would support to human health is in the new druglike compounds being made here and the new methods for making them, which will be applied both here and elsewhere in the future. Some compounds are targeted for very specific applications against cancer or Alzheimer's disease; others are made more broadly to be screened against many targets relevant to disease states. ? ? ?
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