Nine health research centers have received funds to develop ways to reduce the time it takes for clinical research to become treatments for patients. The funds were awarded as part of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program which is led by the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), part of the National Institutes [...]

Saffron Walden and Bristol, UK; 16 July 2010 – BioFocus and the University of Bristol today announced a new drug discovery collaboration aimed at developing treatments for chronic pain associated with diabetes (diabetic neuropathic pain).  BioFocus will provide hit-to-lead and lead optimization services for a Wellcome Trust funded program at the University of Bristol.  Total [...]

NIH has extended its agreement with Galapagos’ service division, BioFocus, for the operation of the Molecular Libraries Small Molecule Repository (MLSMR) through December 2012. Galapagos will thus be eligible to receive up to $8.6 million over the course of the two-year extension. The NIH MLSMR collects samples for high-throughput biological screening and distributes them to [...]

Aquapharm Biodiscovery, a leading marine biotechnology company, announced today it has signed a research agreement with Albany Molecular Research  to identify novel drug-like compounds and scaffolds with anti-microbial and anti-inflammatory activity from Aquapharm’s marine natural products library derived from its extensive collection of marine micro-organisms.Under the terms of this agreement, drawing on its substantial experience [...]

Resource: EPA – United States Environmental Protection Agency Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) on the Gulf Coastline EPA is analyzing air samples for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) – including specifically, benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, and xylene. EPA is sampling for these pollutants because they are present in oil and because, at elevated concentrations, they may cause health [...]

Alice McCarthy In 2003, several program leaders within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recognized that the results from the recently completed Human Genome Project were a launching pad for further study. Now that scientists knew the genome, how could they determine gene function? In particular, how could scientists find specific biological pathways and targets that [...]

* JV will allow screening of 500,000 compounds * Malaria kills up to 1 million people a year * Shares up 0.2 percent LONDON, June 28 (Reuters) – Anglo-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca said it was opening up around 500,000 of its chemical compounds to the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) to help speed up development of [...]

Abstract— Increasing the odds of hit identification in screening is of significance for drug discovery. The odds for finding a hit are closely related either to the diversity of libraries or to the availability of focused libraries. There are no truly diverse libraries and it is difficult to design focused libraries without sufficient information. Hence [...]

Box 1: Speeding up drug screening Whole-cell assays allow new drugs to be screened for efficacy without knowing the molecular targets. High-throughput screens (HTSs) are vital in the quest for new compounds, but until recently have been lacking for Chagas disease. At the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Reto Brun provides a ‘gold standard’ [...]

Data from three projects released into the public domain In its search for new molecules against malaria, MMV has so far supported the screening of more than 5 million compounds for their potential activity against the malaria parasite. Three partners of the MMV-supported early discovery projects have gone a step further and released the data [...]