# Leadership in AD/ADRD Drug Discovery

> **NIH NIH R35** · SCRIPPS RESEARCH INSTITUTE, THE · 2023 · $1,083,553

## Abstract

SUMMARY
This R35 leadership application is relevant to Milestone 6D of the goals/milestones of the NIH Alzheimer’s
disease and Alzheimer’s disease related dementias (AD/ADRD) Summits—“Initiate drug discovery efforts to
develop novel therapeutic agents.” Our overriding goal in this application is to support the infrastructure the PI
is assembling for AD/ADRD drug discovery at Scripps Research, which will continue well after the award is
over. Our major planned milestone is aimed to INSPIRE program building and create team building for
AD/ADRD Drug Discovery using the very considerable institutional resources at Scripps Research and
its Calibr Drug Discovery Center. We are also building one of the nation’s top-ranked Graduate School
programs in drug discovery via our mentoring using the faculty of Scripps’ #1/#2-ranked chemistry-
biochemistry departments in the world. As proof of feasibility, of the six currently FDA-approved medicines for
AD, three were developed out of the PI, Dr. Lipton’s laboratory. Via this R35 Leadership Application, Dr. Lipton
will mentor others to develop AD/ADRD-related drugs acting at novel targets toward disease-modifying
therapy. Specifically, Dr. Lipton will serve as research mentor for New Investigators and Early Stage
Investigators (NI/ESI) in AD/ADRD drug discovery. To date, virtually all AD/ADRD therapeutics evaluated in
human clinical trials have so far failed to show disease-modifying effects for AD/ADRD. For example, the lack
of significant efficacy in clinical trials with Aβ-centered therapeutics to date demands a new paradigm for
development of effective AD therapeutics. To overcome these significant gaps in knowledge and to advance
therapies, improvements in the models and strategies by which AD/ADRD researchers function and execute
need to occur. One solution to this challenge is to unite the best basic scientists with training in neuroscience,
structural biology, bioinformatics and computational biology, with equally expert teams in the pharmaceutical
industry trained in high-throughput screening, assay development, medicinal chemistry, chemical biology and
pharmacology. With a collective and harmonized team along with significant mentoring efforts for junior faculty
(NI/ESI), the PI, Dr. Lipton, has initiated three major efforts to address this unmet medical need, which will be
carried out under the auspices of the current R35 Leadership Award application:
 · Investigation, identification and characterization of potential AD/ADRD therapeutic targets in the context
 of the central pathophysiological processes in AD/ADRD.
 · Execution of drug discovery campaigns to develop investigational new drug (IND) clinical candidates
 iteratively with the target elucidation efforts, while building upon Scripps drug discovery infrastructure to
 accomplish this.
 · Continue to mentor junior faculty and build a world-class graduate school around the chemical biology
 of drug design for AD/ADRD at Scripps (currently ranked...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10687169
- **Project number:** 5R35AG071734-03
- **Recipient organization:** SCRIPPS RESEARCH INSTITUTE, THE
- **Principal Investigator:** STUART A LIPTON
- **Activity code:** R35 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $1,083,553
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2021-09-01 → 2026-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10687169

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10687169, Leadership in AD/ADRD Drug Discovery (5R35AG071734-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10687169. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*