Synethic Chemistry & Probe Development
The SRMLSC Synthetic Chemistry & Probe Development Team is comprised of synthetic organic and medicinal chemists from the Southern Research Institute Organic Chemistry Department. This group has over 50 years experience in drug design and synthesis, and has six FDA-approved drugs on the market as well as several in advanced clinical trials. With nearly 1,000 publications and a variety of grant- and contract-based research programs in the anticancer, anti-infectives, CNS, and other therapeutic areas, the staff of approximately 35 chemists has experience in the synthesis of compounds of a wide variety of structural types.
The goal of the SRMLSC Synthetic Chemistry & Probe Development Team is to convert confirmed screening hits into useful biological probes. After hits from primary screening are confirmed in dose-response and possibly other secondary assays, screening hits will typically still lack critical properties to make them useful as research tools, such as potency, selectivity, adequate solubility, cellular permeability, and metabolic stability. When appropriate, select hits may progress into a synthetic chemistry program designed to optimize these and other properties of the probe. Medicinal chemists on the team work in concert with the assay designer to assess the features required for a useful probe molecule, and may then synthesize a limited number of congeners of the hit compound in order to improve probe utility.
Specific facilities and capabilities available to the Team include:
- Analytical & Spectroscopy Laboratory for complete compound characterization and QC, including automated LC/MS, NMR, and elemental analysis
- HPLC Laboratory for analytical and preparative separations
- Preparative Scale Synthesis Laboratory for large-scale synthesis and purification of intermediates, including preparative HPLC
- Molecular Modeling and Cheminformatics Facility for structure-function analysis and molecular design
- Automated Synthesis Laboratory for solution-, solid-, and liquid-phase parallel synthesis and microwave-assisted synthesis
- Four dedicated Thin Layer Chromatography Laboratories
- Compound Repository and Storage Facility
- X-ray Crystallography Laboratory
- 17 general purpose organic synthesis laboratories
