Researchers entering data on a screen in a laboratory while being watched by a student

Synthetic Chemical Biology Core Facility

Our Mission

The Synthetic Chemical Biology Core strives to provide comprehensive synthetic chemistry capabilities to investigators under one roof. The synthetic expertise of the core includes, but is not limited to, novel and commercially unavailable small molecules, fluorescent molecules and peptides. The core assists in identifying hits for medicinal chemistry optimization in infectious disease targets and provides synthesis capabilities for structure activity studies of said hits. The core staff will work with investigators to design and synthesis novel molecular probes to facilitate their research.

Two researchers in a laboratory looking at experiment results on a computer screen

Our Capabilities

In addition to its synthetic chemistry capabilities the SCB core also encompasses the Purification and Analysis Laboratory (PAL) that provides purification, analysis and quality control of compounds via HPLC-MS.

The SCB Combination

The SCB core is a combination of core laboratories from two NIH-funded COBRE Centers at the University of Kansas: the Center for Chemical Biology of Infectious Disease (CBID) and the Center for Molecular Analysis of Disease Pathways (CMADP). It provides specific and general services to each COBRE center.

  • CMADP
    • Design/synthesis molecular probes of biological systems (small molecules and peptides; focus on novel fluorescent compounds)
  • CBID
    • Medicinal chemistry synthesis
    • Optimization through SAR studies
    • Create/curate chemical libraries for infectious disease research (including fragment libraries)
  • General needs for both COBRE
    • Synthesis of commercially unavailable compounds
    • Compound purification and characterization

Diagram illustrating the SBC combination as described in the text above