# Medicinal Chemistry Core

> **NIH NIH U19** · SCRIPPS RESEARCH INSTITUTE, THE · 2022 · $2,153,030

## Abstract

SUMMARY
The Medicinal Chemistry Core (MCC) is the central focus of the translational research for all our drug discovery
programs and will play a critical role in determining the early lead, late lead and preclinical candidates. Our MCC
is a well-established unit, with a team of high experienced experts from industry and academics, which
specializes in discovering and optimizing first-in-class agents against novel targets with a wide variety of
academic and industrial partners. MCC has played a key role towards obtaining a number of preclinical
candidates which, in turn, have been progressed to several IND enabling studies. While MCC (Core B) will
provide medicinal chemistry services for optimizing hits and leads, ADME/Formulation Core (Core C) will
facilitate ADME profiling for assessing the drug-like properties of the CAMPP direct acting broad spectrum
antiviral compounds described in all the projects. The MCC will perform synthetic chemistry (small scale for in
vitro work and larger scale for non-GLP animal studies), structure-activity relationship analysis capabilities
(SAR), lead optimization (Lead-op), scale-up, tool and custom compound synthesis, structural modification to
improve ADME and PK profile, and structure-based drug design and machine learning (with the help of Structural
and Model Core E). In addition to providing synthesis of key analogs, the expert staff of the core will contribute
their medicinal chemistry and pharmacology expertise to drive compound optimization efforts and in vivo efficacy
studies. MCC will enable the drug discovery by taking hits through hit-to-lead (H2L) stage and then lead
optimization (LeadOP) followed by preclinical candidate development (PCC and PCD) and IND enabling studies
needed to examine the drug in first-in-human (FIH) studies. MCC (Core B) with collaborate with
ADME/Formulation Core (Core C) for in vivo pharmacokinetic/ and tox studies followed by its integration with
Animal and Organoid Model Core (Core D) to determine the pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD)
relationship of compounds which will be used in an iterative cycle of improved drug design and testing. MCC will
work with project, core leaders and executive committee to decide the transition from one stage to another.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10514320
- **Project number:** 1U19AI171443-01
- **Recipient organization:** SCRIPPS RESEARCH INSTITUTE, THE
- **Principal Investigator:** Anil Gupta
- **Activity code:** U19 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $2,153,030
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-05-16 → 2026-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10514320

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10514320, Medicinal Chemistry Core (1U19AI171443-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10514320. Licensed CC0.

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