Welcome
Rapid advances in biological sciences are providing many potential molecular targets relevant to human diseases. While genetic approaches often generate valuable tools to evaluate the role of these molecular targets in cellular processes, organism functionality and human disease, small organic molecules represent valuable orthogonal reagents permitting the interrogation of cellular processes. Revolutionary developments in molecular biology, cell biology, robotic-based high throughput screening, and informatics enable investigators to probe for ligands that precisely perturb the networks or processes relevant to human diseases. Developments in synthetic chemistry, including combinatorial chemistry and diversity oriented synthesis, greatly accelerate access to potential ligands, and modern molecular genetics facilitates the creation of “smart assays” suitable for ligand analyses. These small molecules can provide unique leads for the generation of compounds targeted for drug development using techniques from synthetic and computational chemistry, structural biology, pharmaceutical sciences, and pharmacology. The National Institutes of Health has established a Molecular Library Screening Center Network (MLSCN) to provide the public sector with access to a network of laboratories capable of implementing robust, scalable, and sensitive assays for a broad array of disease-relevant target processes. The mission of the Pittsburgh Molecular Library Screening Center (PMLSC) comprising members of the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, and Sandia National Laboratories is to exploit optical-based high throughput and high content assays to interrogate small molecule libraries.