Duncan NRI The Center for Drug Discovery

The Center for Drug Discovery (CDD) is a strategic center and resource for investigators at Baylor College of Medicine and beyond. The CDD aims to bridge the gap between academic research and pharmaceutical discovery by providing researchers with an economical path into early-stage drug discovery and enabling detailed examination and validation of protein targets and disease mechanisms.

The mission of this center is to develop small molecule probes, preclinical candidates, and drugs for researchers and clinicians in the Texas Medical Center and beyond by using state-of-the-art equipment and methodologies that will yield better candidate compounds for drugs and experimental therapeutics. The CDD researchers quickly identify and advance small molecules to clinical trials to develop cost-effective, novel drug and treatment options for a wide range of diseases, including infectious diseases, neurological diseases, metabolic disorders, cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and inflammatory disorders and other challenging conditions for which few effective treatments exist.

The CDD employs techniques that fully samples the theoretical total “chemical space” that comprises all possible chemical synthesis reaction products, resulting in compounds that more efficiently fill three-dimensional molecular space and better modulate the functions of specific target proteins. The most important among these methods are DNA-encoded chemistry technology and fragment-based library discovery that lower the cost of drug discovery, accelerate the drug discovery process, and bring new hope to finding cures for some of the most urgent diseases that afflict human populations.