Steven Van Lanen
University of Kentucky, KY·Pharmacology
Finding a new medicine often starts with identifying a small molecule that binds a disease-related protein and changes what it does. Before chemists can improve such a molecule, researchers need reliable laboratory tests, called assays, to measure whether a compound has the intended effect, plus ways to sift through many candidates quickly.
- Fields
Pharmacology
Biochemistry
Chemistry
- Topics
chemical biology
assay development
high-throughput screening
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2030
What they work on
- Develop and run virtual screens — target-based, pharmacophore-based and machine-learning-based — to prioritize compounds for center projects before any laboratory testing.
- Provide wet-bench screening services including cytotoxicity, antimicrobial, thermofluor ligand-binding and G-protein-coupled receptor reporter assays to confirm and characterize candidate compounds.
- Build new target-guided assays, including enzyme activity for CadA, bacterial quorum sensing, the human bile acid transporter ASBT, and calcium imaging of cell signaling.
- Expand and leverage the Core's Natural Products Repository as a source of screening compounds, and use tracking and evaluation data to establish a cost basis for long-term core sustainability.
More about the research
This grant supports the Bio Core of the University of Kentucky's Center of Biomedical Research Excellence for Translational Chemical Biology, a center spanning chemical biology, molecular pharmacology and pharmaceutical science, with disease models and drug targets tied to health disparities in Appalachian Kentucky. The Bio Core is the university's only assay development and screening core.
Why it matters
Shared assay development and screening capacity lets investigators turn promising biology into chemical probes and early drug leads faster and at lower cost than any single lab could. Because the center focuses on disease models and targets relevant to Appalachian Kentucky, the compounds and assays it enables could inform treatments for conditions, including infections, that affect that region, while also supporting the training of junior faculty.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Gabor J Tigyi
University of Tennessee Health Science Center, TN·Pharmacology
Optimize small-molecule antagonists of the LPAR5 receptor from existing screening hits, using computational scaffold hopping and a pharmacophore model that maps the chemical features needed for potent, selective binding.
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.
Juan Hu
San Diego State University, CA·Chemistry·Early-career
Screen DNA-encoded combinatorial libraries, in which each compound carries an identifying DNA barcode, with a droplet-scale permeation assay to find cyclic peptides that efficiently cross membrane bilayers.
The school
University of Kentucky: 34 labs on PI Pages, $528M a year on research, 319 research doctorates a year.
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