Infectious Disease Assay Development Core

PROJECT SUMMARY The Infectious Disease Assay Development (IDAD) laboratory for studying the Chemical Biology of Infectious Disease provides expertise on assay development and screening of small molecule libraries. The compounds identified from the screen serve as chemical tools or probes for dissecting mechanism of action and modulating infectious disease targets. In addition to the availability of physical and technical resources to perform chemical screening, it is critical to design, develop and optimize assays that truly reflect specific target function in infectious disease biology. The University of Kansas has an established and successful HTS facility with excellent intellectual and physical resources. The Infectious Disease Assay Development core established in Phase I of CBID funding takes advantage of these assets and expands the current capabilities by providing additional expertise and dedicated research space to develop assays against novel disease relevant targets. The overall goal of this core is to provide a full array of expertise, facilities, services, and training in the area of HTS assay design, development, validation, small and large-scale screening for organism (cell) based or biochemical infectious disease targets. The expected outcomes of these efforts are miniaturized and validated assays suitable for automated large-scale screening that can be performed internally or externally. The expertise and resources are also expected to enable investigators to develop competitive proposals in response to funding opportunity announcements for discovery of chemical probes or therapeutic agents from Department of Defense, or NIH. Additionally, hits generated through successful assay development and small molecule screening efforts serve as starting points for the Computational Chemical Biology and the Synthetic Chemical Biology cores for successful development of optimized compounds for use as chemical probes and pre-therapeutics for infectious diseases.