January 13, 2023 – Cleveland Clinic has been selected to participate in the Chemical Biology Consortium (CBC), the discovery engine of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Experimental Therapeutics (NExT) Program, administered through the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (FNLCR), a federal national laboratory sponsored by the NCI, part of the National Institutes of Health, and currently operated by Leidos Biomedical Research, Inc.
As part of the CBC, academic, nonprofit research organizations and companies across the country offer technology, staffing and expertise to move projects through the NExT Program’s therapeutics pipeline, designed to accelerate cancer therapeutic discoveries. The CBC provides support for early-stage drug discovery activities for small-molecule therapies, which target the disease on a molecular level.
Accelerating the development of targeted therapies provides more options and personalized treatment options for patients with cancer. Membership in the CBC positions Cleveland Clinic on the forefront of cancer drug discovery efforts and region to support promising projects and connect with other top-tier research institutions.
Membership in the CBC is a milestone for Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Therapeutic Discovery (C3TD), which already partners with researchers throughout the enterprise to support projects spanning oncology, neurology and eye, inflammation and cardiovascular diseases. C3TD will contribute expertise in medicinal chemistry, protein and structural science, chemical biology, and compound screening.
Cleveland Clinic was selected through a competitive process, demonstrating a proven track record on supporting early stage probe and drug discovery efforts, as well as the capacity and capability to take on additional NCI projects. Cleveland Clinic is now one of 18 institutes in the CBC.
Along with attracting funding through the CBC, Cleveland Clinic researchers and C3TD staff members will benefit from sharing best practices and working together to tackle complex problems in cancer treatment, Dr. Stauffer says.
This is not the first federal recognition the C3TD earned this year. Dr. Stauffer and Jae Jung, Ph.D., Director of the Global Center for Pathogen & Human Health Research, received $3.28 million from a nationwide National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) initiative for projects targeting viruses with high pandemic potential.