Drug Screening Core

Principal Investigator: Craig Peacock, Ph.D.

Co-investigators: Michelle Rudek, PharmD PhD, Hans Hammers, MD, PhD

Several recent and ongoing FAMRI-supported projects involve preclinical evaluation of putative novel cancer therapeutics.  The Drug Screening Core, directed by Craig Peacock in the Cancer Biology program, was established to provide support to investigators interested in drug development in the preclinical context, providing focused expertise and relevant experimental model systems that might be beyond the capacity of individual laboratory investigators to support.  One component of this Core supported the generation, expansion, and validation of a primary xenograft “library” of tobacco-related lung cancers, with preferential access provided for FAMRI-supported investigators for use as a platform on which to test novel anticancer strategies.  This model, comprised of tumor directly implanted from patients into recipient mice with no intervening cell culture, appears to better reflect the biology of these diseases than do standard cell-line based xenograft models and is being extensively used by FAMRI-funded investigators.  A second component of this Core supports laboratories providing expertise and innovative models for assessment of anti-angiogenic pathways, based on the observation that many FAMRI-funded investigators were pursuing projects that could benefit from this resource.  A third component supports and provides financed access for FAMRI investigators to a pharmacokinetics/ pharmacodynamics core laboratory with capacity to quantitatively analyze novel agents and their metabolites in biological specimens.  The complexity and extent of the analyses provided within this core exceed that of any individual laboratory.  Together these components facilitate detailed and comprehensive in vivo assessments of potential novel anticancer drugs, moving preclinical therapeutic strategies closer to application in patients.