Robert Damoiseaux
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Pharmacology
Finding a new cancer drug often starts with testing thousands of compounds or genes to see which ones change how cells behave. High-throughput screening (HTS) uses robots to run these tests at scale.
- Fields
Pharmacology
Chemistry
Biochemistry
- Topics
high-throughput screening
drug discovery
cancer drug development
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2030
What they work on
- Expand the facility's high-throughput screening capabilities with new approaches, building on six robotic systems that test more than 100,000 samples per day and on imaging readouts such as spinning-disk confocal microscopy.
- Expand functional genomics screening, which switches genes off or on across the genome, using libraries of human CRISPR guide RNAs, shRNA, siRNA, and cDNA to find new molecular targets in cancer.
- Enhance drug development support for small and large molecules, including assay development, data analysis, and follow-up testing of potency, toxicity, and selectivity to optimize agents for clinical translation.
More about the research
It can reveal new targets in cancer cells and early drug candidates that act on them. This grant supports the Molecular Screening Shared Resource (MSSR) at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center (JCCC), a facility directed by Robert Damoiseaux that runs such screens for cancer researchers.
Why it matters
By giving cancer researchers robotic access to large compound and gene libraries, the facility helps them find new targets and turn early hits into drug candidates. Its record includes a small-molecule agent, TRE-515, that passed a Phase I dosing trial, and a large-molecule drug, DUNP19, that received FDA orphan drug designation and is in clinical-grade production. Continued screening could feed more candidates toward patients with cancer.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Drew James Adams
Case Western Reserve University, OH·Pharmacology
Determine why small molecules binding the same Cys528 site on Exportin-1 (XPO1), a nuclear transport protein, differ in their effects on nuclear export and cell survival, using structural and functional assays.
Steven Van Lanen
University of Kentucky, KY·Pharmacology
Develop and run virtual screens — target-based, pharmacophore-based and machine-learning-based — to prioritize compounds for center projects before any laboratory testing.
James Papin
University of Oklahoma-Health Sciences Center, OK·Biochemistry
Provide next-generation DNA and RNA sequencing, and bioinformatics analysis of combined genomic, proteomic and metabolomic data, to cancer center members and other investigators.
The school
University of California-Los Angeles: 84 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 803 research doctorates a year.
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