Drug Discovery

The Molecular Targets Program (MTP) is an organizational entity within the Center for Cancer Research (CCR) at NCI. The MTP provides the focus and infrastructure to enable CCR tenured and tenure-track Principal Investigators to initiate and pursue interdisciplinary, applied, collaborative, molecularly targeted drug discovery research within a matrix organizational format that is both supportive of and complementary to the traditional NCI/NIH intramural Lab/Branch organization. The MTP mission statement further defines the new organizational model. The initial goal of the MTP is to facilita… [learn more]

The Medicinal Chemistry Accelerator (MCA) is a collaborative CCR resource that supports investigators in developing small molecule inhibitors for anticancer drug candidates. While CCR and NCATS have infrastructure to identify initial “hits” through high-throughput screening, advancing these hits into validated leads for preclinical studies requires specialized medicinal and synthetic chemistry expertise beyond the scope of individual sections. The MCA collaborates with researchers to design, synthesize, and optimize small molecules, improving potency and establishing structure-activity… [learn more]