— College of Pharmacy — Research — Center for Drug Design & Innovation — About Us

About Us

The UNMC Center for Drug Design and Innovation will provide guidance and support to help advance early-stage drug discovery projects across UNMC and the NU system. In addition to the Center’s role in supporting drug discovery related research efforts on campus, the Center will also provide educational outreach for faculty and students related to drug discovery.

There are many individuals on the UNMC campus (and throughout the wider University of Nebraska system) who are working on research along the drug discovery pathway. This center will highlight these activities and allow scientists working in these areas to find other complementary investigators to collaborate with and develop positive synergies across the many disciplines of drug discovery.

The new Center will focus on organizing these efforts that range from target identification and validation, gene editing/silencing, medicinal chemistry, lead identification and optimization and drug delivery and this new center aims to leverage internal resources within the University system to provide an innovative system for enhancing UNMC’s drug discovery capabilities and expertise. Establishment of the Center will lay the foundation for seminal contributions from UNMC’s research faculty as well as the wider Nebraska system and put the UN system on par with many of our Big Ten institutions.

Mission Goals

Enhance

Support

Promote

Provide

Enhance, organize, and grow UNMC’s drug discovery capabilities. This will be a center that will help develop and advance all stages of drug discovery projects from basic discovery (target identification/validation, hit-to-lead optimization) to translational efforts (IND enabling which can enable clinical evaluation). The Center will also organize past, current, and future chemical research to assemble and archive a NU Chemical Compound Collection that is accessible to NU scientists for future drug screening projects as new druggable targets are identified.

Promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. The Center will help stimulate and advance innovative research ideas, which may lead to the development of new intellectual property and research tools. This intellectual property will be the basis for commercialization efforts including both collaborations with major pharmaceutical companies and the formation of new start-up companies. Commercialization of the innovative ideas and solutions that are developed through the Center would have a significant financial impact on future research opportunities at the university.