University of Florida scientists with expertise in drug discovery and chemistry are advancing potential treatments for challenging diseases via a new collaborative initiative.
The UF College of Pharmacy’s Department of Medicinal Chemistry in Gainesville and the Chemistry Department at The Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation & Technology in Jupiter have announced the creation of a new shared, Jupiter-based faculty position.
It takes many tools and specialists to find and develop new treatments, and the two campuses each have distinct and complementary strengths. The new faculty member will draw on both institutions’ expertise to target diseases with few options, including aggressive cancers, brain disorders, and genetic and infectious diseases, leaders from both campuses said.
The ideal candidate will conduct basic and biomedical research using advanced methods of small molecule design, structural biology, and biochemistry, said Matthew Disney, Ph.D., who chairs the Chemistry Department at The Wertheim UF Scripps Institute. Their mission will be to address scientific challenges across disciplines and train the next generation of scientists.
Closer collaboration among the drug discovery specialists in Gainesville and Jupiter is natural, as they have a common mission and share the same vision, said Hendrik Luesch, Ph.D., who chairs the Department of Medicinal Chemistry in the UF College of Pharmacy and leads UF’s Center for Natural Products, Drug Discovery and Development, or CNPD3. Both his department and The Wertheim UF Scripps Institute possess extraordinary natural products chemistry programs.
Luesch, the Debbie and Sylvia DeSantis Chair in Natural Products Drug Discovery and Development, has amassed a unique collection of bioactive marine natural products for numerous disease indications in his Gainesville laboratory and the CNPD3. He works closely with the Natural Products Discovery Center at The Wertheim UF Scripps Institute, which has one of the world’s largest collection of microorganisms with potential use as medicines or the inspiration for medicines.
“Together, our unique infrastructure and platforms in natural product discovery, RNA structure-function research, and small-molecule targeting, including targeted protein degradation, molecular diagnostics, and AI-powered computational drug design and screening, means we can elevate our work to new heights to address many medical challenges, including aggressive cancers and threatening infectious diseases,” Luesch said.
Also boosting the cross-campus collaborations, Wertheim UF Scripps chemistry faculty have joint faculty appointments with the College of Pharmacy’s medicinal chemistry program.
“The opportunity to collaborate with UF’s Department of Medicinal Chemistry through shared faculty and joint appointments is synergistic for all of us,” Disney said. “Both programs will benefit as we harness the unique skills and resources of each campus to do the best and most exciting science we can, and train the next generation of scientists.”
Members of both departments are also part of the UF Health Cancer Center, one of 72 National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers. The Jupiter and Gainesville campuses possess world-class scientific core facilities that power research on new medicines from target validation to in vivo studies. These include genomics, proteomics, histology, and structural biology tools, including cryo-electron microscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance, drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics, and a high-throughput robotic molecular screening center. These resources, more typical of a pharmaceutical company, enable scholars to go farther faster with their research, to help patients awaiting cures. Computational resources are second to none as well. The University of Florida has one of the most advanced supercomputing clusters in academia, HiPerGator, with the NVIDIA Ampere A100 GPU SuperPod. It has been used to enable structure-based drug design and AI approaches to accelerate discoveries, Disney said.
Collaboration among Wertheim UF Scripps and UF medicinal chemistry faculty began soon after the Jupiter campus joined UF in 2022. The campuses jointly host UF’s popular Drug Discovery Symposium, Luesch noted, and faculty members developed joint research projects that have already been funded. Collaboration will grow as the campuses develop shared graduate student opportunities, he added. Florida is a fertile training ground for students who want to develop high-impact careers in chemical biology and drug development, Disney agreed.
“Discovering new medicines is challenging work that requires the expertise of many. There are real synergies for our scientists and students as we build collaboration among departments,” Disney said. “I am confident that the ultimate beneficiaries will be people anxiously awaiting new treatment options.”
Based in Jupiter, Florida
Open Rank Faculty Position Available
The Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation & Technology’s Department of Chemistry in Jupiter, Florida and the University of Florida’s Department of Medicinal Chemistry are jointly hiring a faculty member in medicinal chemistry or chemical biology, broadly defined, to be housed on the Jupiter campus.