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COLLABORATION
Neuro Center Ramps Up Drug Discovery Core
Building a drug discovery program that works faster, cheaper, and better than those at pharmaceutical companies is just one facet of the Harvard Center for Neurodegeneration and Repair's mission.
It's an ambitious goal, but one that HCNR leaders say is being realized thanks to the talent pool in the Harvard medical community, the spirit of open collaboration fostered by HMS dean Joseph Martin, and an anonymous $37.5 million gift that made the center possible (see Focus, Feb. 23, 2001). With members at HMS, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Children's Hospital, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, and McLean Hospital, HCNR recently raised its profile by launching a website that will be a key avenue for communicating across institutions and attracting new investigators.
One of five HCNR cores, the Laboratory for Drug Discovery in Neurodegeneration (LDDN) was launched in mid-2001 and is already running at 90 percent capacity, said HCNR director Adrian Ivinson. The lab grew out of the Partners Program in Neurodegenerative Diseases, which includes scientists at the BWH Center for Neurologic Diseases and the MGH Center for Aging, Genetics, and Neurodegeneration. Peter Lansbury, HMS associate professor of neurology at BWH, chaired the task force for HCNR's Core D, which evolved into the LDDN. Lansbury now serves as lab chair.
The lab uses high-speed robotic technology to screen FDA-approved drugs and larger collections of druglike molecules to gauge their effects on molecular and cellular processes thought to have causative roles in neurodegenerative diseases. The most active compounds are studied and modified in an attempt to develop compounds that may form the basis of a new drug.
"The LDDN is structured like a biotech company, with a biology group that focuses on assay development, screening, and follow-up, and a medicinal chemistry group that focuses on optimizing compounds discovered through the screening efforts of the biologists," said laboratory director Ross Stein. "So it might be appropriate to think of us as a not-for-profit biotech company."
But with some crucial differences. First, the lab's personnel structure is designed with both a solid base of expertise in high-throughput screening and drug development (10 staff scientists) and a revolving door giving investigators from across the HCNR community access to the time and resources needed to test their most promising drug targets. Second, because the lab is noncommercial, it can devote substantial effort to research areas typically neglected by industry.
Ivinson emphasized that HCNR exists to serve its member investigators, not to create a centralized bureaucracy controlling neurodegeneration research at HMS. Besides LDDN, the other cores include the Centers for Translational Neurology Research, Brain Imaging, Molecular Pathology, and Bioinformatics.
The center's guiding principle is to "play down the institutional boundaries and work at promoting a community of like-minded investigators," he said. "We de-emphasize competition, and we emphasize synergy and collaboration. And we back up our philosophy with high-level institutional support and wonderful resources."
--Tom Reynolds
Copyright 2002 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
