The Penn Center for Molecular Discovery

Principal Investigator: Scott Diamond

The Penn Center for Molecular Discovery (PCMD) approaches this high volume screening challenge with unique capabilities. “We can probe chemical-biological interactions in nanoliter volumes the size of a speck of dust,” Diamond said, who has invented a new technology to print thousand of molecules on a glass surface the size of a business card and then rapidly test these molecules against proteases and other enzymes purified from human or animal cells, bacteria, parasites, insects or viruses. Penn will also be able to test compounds in thousands of miniature wells each containing a millimeter-sized zebra fish, an unlikely organism that has proven its worth in studies of heart or nerve function as well as in cancer biology because the transparent fish is easily imaged. PCMD, based in Philadelphia, is surrounded by local HTS labs including those of Merck, GSK, Wyeth, J&J, and Schering. This industrial connections help migrate HTS skills into the university environment of this center.

Upenn Capabilities and Technologies

For inquiries about assay development at a particular The Penn Center for Molecular Discovery, please contact the center representative listed in conjunction with visiting the Center’s Web site.

• The Penn Center for Molecular Discovery
  • Please contact: Scott L. Diamond, Ph.D.

See also: Enabling PI-Center Collaboration Document

For further information about the Penn Center for Molecular Discovery, see below:

• Penn Center Staff
• Instrumentation
• HTS Workflow
• Microarray Screening
• Protease Proteomics
• Zebra Fish Screening
• Synthetic Chemistry
• Metallo-Organic Pharmacophores
• Cheminformatics and Computational Chemistry