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Texas Southern University Selected for Participation in National Chemical Biology Consortium

Posted on Thursday, March 09, 2023

Texas Southern University Selected for Participation in National Chemical Biology Consortium

(l to r) Dr. Huan Xie (principal investigator), Dr. Dong Liang, and Dr. Omonike Olaleye

Texas Southern University has been selected to participate in the Chemical Biology Consortium (CBC), the discovery engine of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Experimental Therapeutics (NExT) Program, administered through the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (FNLCR), a federal national laboratory sponsored by the NCI, part of the National Institutes of Health, and currently operated by Leidos Biomedical Research, Inc.

For the next five years (2022-2027), TSU will participate in the CBC, which conducts oncology drug discovery in the NExT Program. Dr. Huan Xie, Principal Investigator, a Professor of Pharmaceutics at TSU and Director of the Graduate Program in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, leads a team of TSU faculty for this highly competitive, comprehensive, and nationally renowned research engagement. A one-of-a-kind Institute of Drug Discovery and Development (iD3) is built to provide unique, highly translational, and specialized research services to accelerate novel drug discovery and development. The vision of iD3 is to grow to be an independent self-sufficient research entity leading TSU from an R2 Research University to an R1 Research University further increasing cutting-edge research and opportunities at TSU.

The mission of the NExT Program is to advance clinical practice and bring improved therapies to patients with cancer by supporting the most promising new drug discovery and development projects. The CBC within NExT is a highly collaborative drug discovery consortium funded by the NCI that is designed to integrate all aspects of early-stage drug discovery from target validation through candidate selection, leading to the discovery of new molecular entities suitable for entry into clinical development. The participating centers will provide project teams with the technical expertise and the scientific personnel that are needed to navigate scientific roadblocks and advance projects through the NExT pipeline. Centers on multidisciplinary CBC drug discovery teams will enable the translation of basic research findings for the benefit of cancer patients.

Among the 18 selected institutions, 7 are universities, which include Texas Southern University. TSU is the only consortium representative from Texas and the only Historically Black College and University (HBCU) in the nation selected for this award.

The TSU iD3 will be built upon two currently funded large centers: the GCC Center for Comprehensive PK/PD and Formulation (CCPF), supported by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), and the Center for Biomedical and Minority Health Research (CBMHR), supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), MPI: Drs. Omonike Olaleye and Huan Xie). The iD3 team includes Dr. Huan Xie, as Founding Director, Drs. Dong Liang and Omonike Olaleye, as Co-Founding Directors, Drs. Song Gao, Yun Zhang, Kehinde Idowu, Anuoluwapo Egebejimi, Alamenu Sundaresan and Daniel Vrinceanu, as faculty experts. The iD3 team will work closely with Intellectual Concepts, LLC (IC) to perform program and contract management.

Dr. Xie and Dr. Olaleye will also participate in CBC Steering Committee Meetings for the next 5 years. TSU will provide highly qualified staffing, technical expertise, and scientific leadership to advance projects that begin as highly ranked concepts and advance through the milestones established by the project teams. Scientific leaders from CBC Centers will participate on the CBC Steering Committee to assist NCI: 1) to evaluate the merits of project proposals and concepts, and 2) to develop the critical milestones, experiments, and resources required to formulate project plans. The CBC centers will respond to Requests for Proposals that define projects objectives resulting from Concept Reviews. In addition to conducting reviews and the development of project plans, the CBC Steering Committee Meetings will provide a forum for feedback and guidance to project teams, discussions of emerging drug discovery technologies, and feedback to NCI regarding operational inefficiencies.

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Last updated: 03/09/2023