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Medicinal Chemistry Group

Industry and academic units collaborate for advanced results

As federal research dollarrs become more limited, the university must find new ways to work with industry and grow ressarch through industrial funding. The work of the Medicinal Chemistry Group is a shining example of what can be accomplished when we seek out new partnerships and think beyond the traditional funding models. 

Since its move to the Innovative Technology Enterprises at the University of Missouri—St. Louis, the MCG has contracted with nine clients and its revenue is up 35 percent to the prior year with totals projected at $250,000.

Working with St. Louis University and One World Health (Gates Foundation) in the area of orphan and neglected diseases, the MCG is currently targeting the development of a treatment for childhood diarrhea, as well as the development of new anti-filarial agents to combat what is usually an infectious parasitic disease.

In addition to its contributions to drug discovery for orphan diseases, the MCG supports fledging startup companies in the region that do not have the necessary expertise and scientific capacity in house. These activities, often organized as fee-for-service contracts, provide low-cost solutions to scientific problems in a timely fashion.

The MCG is performing syntheses of new compounds for Confluence Discovery Technologies, Inc., a life sciences company that develops innovative treatments for animal and human diseases. The drugs are designed to target the large unmet medical needs associated with cancer and chronic inflammatory and autoimmune disease in both markets.

The group also provides syntheses work for BioMed Valley Discoveries, Inc., a research group funded by the Stowers Institute for Medical Research to address medical projects that are ‘too early, too challenging and too conventional for traditional biotech or pharmaceutical companies.’ These medicinal areas of concentration include cancer and inflammatory and infectious diseases.

For Midway Animal Health Inc., the MCG is performing preparative scale reverse phase purification to provide sufficient chemical quantities for a critical animal study that could result in a new veterinary medicine.

For more information on UMSL's Medicinal Chemistry Group, click here.