Drug Discovery
The Central Alabama High-Field NMR Facility plays a pivotal role in drug discovery efforts, target identification, and rational drugdesign at UAB through existing partnerships with the Department of Chemistry's Laboratory for Chemical Synthesis and Analysis. Its instruments (850, 700, 600, 500, 400, and 300 NMR) greatly facility these efforts, providing considerable infrastructure to the drug-discovery community at UAB, ADDA, Southern Research Institute, and regional biotechnology industries.
The 850 MHz NMR spectrometer with cryoprobe gives researchers unique capability in studying high molecular weight systems, providing ultra-high sensitivity in detecting trace molecules (such as natural products at the sub-micromolar concentrations). It has the highest spectral resolution of all instruments in the state of Alabama.The Central Alabama High Field NMR Facility has an array of lower-field NMR spectrometers (400 MHz, 400 MHz, and 300 MHz) available to UAB researchers carrying out drug synthesis and facilitating the Department of Chemistry's Laboratory for Chemical Synthesis and Analysis. These instruments are classified as "walk-up" so that chemists both within the Department of Chemistry and elsewhere on the UAB campus can gain easy access at almost any time of the day.
Synthetic chemists use these instruments for routine analyses of complex synthetic pathways; 15-30 minutes are needed to check reaction progress and reaction products. These instruments also serve as the front-line in undergraduate and graduate training.
The two Bruker 400 MHz and Bruker 300 MHz NMR spectrometers are a considerable resource to all UAB faculty engaged in chemical synthesis. Complementing the NMR capabilities, the Department of Chemistry's Laboratory for Chemical Synthesis and Characterization provides considerable infrastructure for small molecule analysis. Included in this instrumentation are a variety of mass spectrometers, including
• LC-ESI-MS
• LC-Q-Tra
• MALDI-TOF/TOF
• a state-of-the-art Bruker AXS SMART-Breeze X-ray diffractometer
These instruments are also used by researchers off-campus, including Southern Research Institute, BioCryst, Surmodics, Durect, Agrium, and Avanti Polar Lipids.