Thanks to $4M grant, scientist hopes to help slash drug costs
What good is an effective drug if patients can’t afford it? It’s a question that’s disturbing to many in the medical field. Now, a Scripps Florida scientist in Jupiter is trying to do something about it.
Thomas Kodadek, a chemist, hopes to slash the high price of drug development with the help of a new grant that’s worth $4 million over five years. The award was one of 10 made recently by Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.
The initiative, called the NIH Common Fund HighRisk, High-Reward Research program, supports “unconventional approaches” to major challenges in biomedical and behavioral research.
The Scripps Florida program will use miniaturization technologies developed by Kodadek and others at the institute to reduce the amount of compounds required to test drug candidates against cellular targets. That also should reduce the expense, according to Scripps.
The platform has the potential to slash drug-discovery costs by a hundredfold, Kodadek said. The new type of screening also “could provide a wealth of drug leads,” he said.
Kodadek said melanoma and pancreatic ductal cell carcinoma will be among the first cancer cells to be screened. Scientists hope to find compounds that are selectively toxic to the cancer cells, but not to healthy cells.
In 2006, Kodadek received the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award. He joined Scripps Florida in 2009.
Scripps Florida began operating in Palm Beach County a decade ago and now employs 500 scientists and support personnel in Jupiter. Thomas Kodadek joined Scripps Florida