Core Facilities

Our research core facilities are supported by Kentucky state appropriations, the UofL School of Medicine, the UofL EVPRI’s Office and very generous donations from the Humana Foundation, the Kosair Foundation, the James Graham Brown Foundation, the Regional Cancer Center Corporation and numerous individual/family donations for which we’re exceptionally grateful. 

Cancer Drug Discovery Pipeline

A significant contingent of our Research Cores and Facilities have been specifically designed to make each step in the drug discovery process as simple and accessible as possible for all cancer research investigators. The process begins with target discovery that can be accomplished with help from our Genomics Technology and Education Core. Using state-of-the-art software and with expert Bioinformatics and Biostatistics support, researchers can mine publicly available data and/or their own datasets (generated by the UofL’s Sequencing Technology Center) to identify unique targets for therapeutic intervention.

Once a target is identified, the Protein Expression Core can produce significant quantities of pure protein which can then be used for structural determinations by the NMR Facility. Next, the BCC’s Molecular Modeling Core can virtually screen millions of compounds against the target protein’s active site domain(s) to identify lead candidate compound inhibitors. Lead compound/target interaction and validation can subsequently be accomplished using several different biophysical assays that are routinely run by our Biophysical Core Laboratory. Once a lead compound has been identified, the BCC Molecular Modeling Core will continue to assist you in developing a quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) approach to identifying and optimizing second generation compounds. Finally, the Medicinal Chemistry Core can help with identifying commercially available substituent analogs of first- and second-generation lead compounds as well as performing unique chemical syntheses to generate rationally designed compounds from the optimization and QSAR