Topics and Expertise: Small Molecule Discovery Center (SMDC)

Michelle Arkin, PhD, has received the 2018 Breakthrough Science Initiative Award from the Ono Pharma Foundation to study a class of proteins, called 14-3-3 proteins, known to be involved in various cancers, with the ultimate goal of enabling discoveries that lead to new ways to treat cancer.

A pioneering public/private consortium is poised to turn the marathon of drug discovery into a team relay, maybe even a short one.

James Wells, PhD, chair of the School’s Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, has been elected as a member of the 2015 class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The UCSF School of Pharmacy’s Small Molecule Discovery Center (SMDC) provided a key assist to researchers seeking to repurpose existing drugs to treat the worldwide scourge of amoebic dysentery.

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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