Services
A number of key core services are located in the CTT to assist all investigators at MD Anderson in bringing their discoveries from concept to clinic. These services include an siRNA Screening Service to help identify new targets; the Translational Chemistry Core Facility offering custom synthesis and development services; the Pharmaceutical Development Center for preclinical drug development; our newest service, the Sequencing and Non-Coding RNA Program, will identify undiscovered genes through state-of-the-art genomic research and technology development; and a planned Molecular Modeling/Structural Biology Service that offers computer-based core service for lead identification. Each of these core services enables the Center for Targeted Therapy to rapidly bring new types of cancer agents from concept to clinic not only for the benefit of patients at MD Anderson, but in Texas, the U.S. and throughout the world.
siRNA Screening Service
- Established to serve as a hypothesis-generating engine for the identification of new therapeutic targets
- Available to all MD Anderson investigators
- High-throughput screening (HTS) of the human genome siRNA library allows investigators the chance to further develop potential targets by using this HTS, which contains siRNAs targeting ~21,000 known human genes
- This hypothesis-driven technology enables investigators to identify previously unknown modulators of genes of interest
Translational Chemistry Core Facility
- Service has three dedicated research scientists -- including a molecular modeler -- in addition to a full-time director
- Available to all MD Anderson investigators
- Provides custom synthesis services to researchers by manufacturing specific compounds for use in research
Pharmaceutical Development Center (PDC)
- Carries out all aspects of cancer drug development
- Currently complete 4 ½ projects per year with an increased demand – both internally and externally – for services
- Exploring opportunities to develop more research space in order to accommodate seven projects per year for the next five years
Sequencing and Non-Coding RNA Program
- Launched the Sequencing and Non-Coding RNA Program in December 2008
- Open to all MD Anderson investigators
- Offers cutting-edge, emerging technology and expertise in functional genomics, including SOLiD™ Next Generation Sequencing, for the discovery of new non-coding RNAs and expression profiling for known ncRNAs to further cancer research
- Eventually generate new cancer prevention and therapeutic agents by targeting and utilizing ncRNAs
Molecular Modeling/ Structural Biology Service (computational drug design)
- Ability to screen 5 million compounds with multiple software programs and 1052 CPUs (central processing unites) utilizing the institutional high performance computing clusters (HPC)
- Not limited to commercial software programs because we have the ability to develop our own
- Developing a Web-based portal that will allow investigators to use a relational database to identify and study signaling pathways in cancers, build models and make predictions for new data, perform computations connected through the service’s HPC and utilize visualization tools that provide an opportunity to see the structure