The Small Molecule Screening and Synthesis Facility (SMSSF) Shared Resource provides UW Carbone Cancer Center (UWCCC) members, other UW faculty and students, and scientists from other universities and companies with fee-for-service access to early stage drug discovery infrastructure, expert staff and services. These services include:

• High-throughput screening (HTS) of drug-like chemical libraries and human RNAi libraries
• Biological profiling assays and mechanism of action assays
• Synthetic medicinal chemistry and lead optimization
• Synthetic and natural product compound purification and identification
• Molecular modeling and virtual screening
• Mycoplasma detection in cultured cells
• Training and access to liquid handling robotics, LiCor scanner and plate readers

These activities foster collaborative drug discovery research between chemists, biologists and physician scientists that leads to the identification of new small molecules that inhibit cancer phenotypes in cellular or animal models and that can be further developed for clinical evaluation in human cancer patients. SMSSF services also are available for drug discovery in all other therapeutic areas.  

Learn more about the Small Molecule Screening and Synthesis Facility's Scientific Accomplishments. 

SMSSF is one of the sponsors of the Development of Robust Experimental Asay Methods (aDREAM) Conference 2013 on October 18, 2013. 

Funding received from the UWCCC Cancer Center Support Grant (CCSG) for published research, including the use of UWCCC Shared Resources to generate or analyze data, or conduct clinical trials, needs to reference the UWCCC. See Acknowledging UWCCC in Publications, Posters and Presentations. 

SMSSF Advisory Board

Paul G. Ahlquist, PhD
Professor, McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research
The Morgridge Institute for Research

Edmund J. Elder, Jr., PhD, RPh
Director, Zeeh Pharmaceutical Experiment Station
School of Pharmacy

W. John Kao, PhD, FBSE
Professor of Pharmacy, Surgery and Biomedical Engineering
Assistant Executive Director of UW NIH-CTSA (ICTR)

Laura L. Kiessling, PhD
Professor, Department of Chemistry

Brian E. McIntosh, PhD
Assistant Scientist, Regenerative Biology,
The Morgridge Institute for Research

Terry Riss, PhD
Senior Product Specialist, Promega Corporation

Richard Hsung, PhD
Professor, School of Pharmacy

Wei Xu, PhD
Associate Professor, McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research