Small Molecule Discovery Center (SMDC)

A promising new way to fight human herpes viruses and a drug delivery device to better treat a major cause of blindness have won development funding from UCSF’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI).

A technology developed in the laboratory of James Wells, PhD, chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, UCSF School of Pharmacy, will drive a new approach to cancer treatment that switches on or triggers, with small molecules, the enzymes called caspases that promote cell death.

UCSF's Small Molecule Discovery Center (SMDC) announced on February 18, 2010 that it has signed its first major industry partnership agreement since the SMDC was founded in 2005. The agreement is with Genentech, Inc. to discover and develop drug candidates for neurodegenerative diseases.

Scientists from the UCSF School of Pharmacy's Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry have been selected to lead a new federal initiative aimed at developing new classes of drugs to target cancer.

UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty member James Wells, PhD, director of the Small Molecule Discovery Center, describes his approach, which uses precise, sophisticated matchmaking techniques, to improving the success rate of finding chemical compounds with the potential to become drugs.

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