Services & Resources

Available Services and Resources

1. Drug Discovery, Screening, and Development
2. Proprietary South Carolina Compound Library – SC3
3. Synthetic Chemistry
4. Multidisciplinary Expertise and Leadership
5. Cheminformatics
6. High-Content Microscopy
7. MUSC DDC Vault – Discovery Informatics Database

Facilities

The MUSC Drug Discovery Core screening facility occupies approximately 900 sq. ft. of laboratory space located in Room 420 of the Drug Discovery Building at the Medical University of South Carolina. This space is adequate to house the entire screening operation (sample prep, plate prep, bar-coding, liquid handling, plate reader), compound library, and 2 Waters LC/MS instruments. These instruments are available for individual use for a nominal fee. The computational chemistry and bioinformatics center is housed in 90 sq. ft. of laboratory space assigned to Dr. Woster (DD-422A). All data and structural information for the SC3 is stored in a secure compound database (the MUSC Vault) which is accessible to DDC staff and individual PI’s. All proprietary data are stored securely and are unavailable outside the MUSC firewall. The MUSC DDC is also well equipped for chemical synthesis, and can generate libraries of analogues based on optimization of screening hits and lead compounds.

Services

Synthesis & Optimization Capabilities

The MUSC DDC will design a synthetic pathway to produce hit compounds and a limited number of derivatives in high yield, and with sufficient flexibility to introduce chemical diversity. As analogues are produced and evaluated, data from biological studies are used to design more effective analogues, often guided by structure-based design. Our two-fold goal is to maximize efficacy and calculated pharmacokinetic parameters, and to generate new chemical entities (NCEs) that constitute new intellectual property. Thus, faculty and other clients are provided with potential clinical candidates that can be patented and commercialized.

Proprietary South Carolina Compound Library - SC3

As part of its mission, the MUSC has created the South Carolina Compound Collection (SC3), which is comprised of diverse molecules that can be used in biological screens to identify hits and leads for drug discovery projects. The goal in creating this library is to offer an in-house collection of validated analogues that are representative of the best compounds made by academic and industrial chemists in South Carolina. There are no restrictions on the chemical properties of these compounds (molecular weight, hydrogen bond donors and acceptors, cLogP, etc.) because the goal is to maintain a collection with high chemical diversity. Compounds are added to the collection through commercial purchases, donations of compound collections from South Carolina academic and industrial sites, and samples from researchers at MUSC and USC. All compounds are annotated and stored in the searchable SC3 database along with any associated physical and biological data.

The SC3 was founded on the original donation of 3000 compounds from retired organic chemist Charles Beam from the College of Charleston. This original donation was then bolstered by the donation of the Aeterna Zentaris Discovery Library of over 130,000 proprietary compounds and continues to expand with donations for chemists at MUSC and across the state. The SC3 average physiochemical properties are MW~400, cLogP~2, rotatable bonds ~7, ~3 proton acceptors, and 2 proton donors; however ~20% of compounds fall well outside of these averages. In terms of diversity with a threshold of 80% similarity, there are ~70,000 clusters while at 50% similarity there are ~10,000 clusters. All of the compounds are quality controlled for purity and have been characterized for general toxicity using the industry standard Alamar blue assay. Outside of MUSC, over 80% of these compounds are unknown and proprietary.