Welcome to the landing page of the Texas A&M Drug Discovery and Development Resource Center (3DRC). We are a grant funded academic drug discovery core part of Texas A&M Health – Institute of Bioscience and Technology located the TMC3 Helix Park Collaborative Research Building in Houston Texas. This center offers a wide range of drug discovery resources including expert consultation and access to industry standard instrumentation. Our platform includes access to expertise in generative AI and machine learning methods for custom ligand design, synthetic and medicinal chemistry, and high-throughput screening.
A Brief Historical Overview
The Drug Discovery and Development Resource Center at Texas A&M University’s Institute of Biosciences and Technology (IBT) has advanced drug discovery and biomedical research since its establishment in 2006. Initially founded as the High Throughput Screening Core for Chemical Genomics under the Gulf Coast Consortia (GCC) at the University of Texas Health Science Center (UTHealth) in Houston, the center was led by Dr. Peter J.A. Davies and Dr. Clifford Stephan, with support from the John S. Dunn Foundation. This initiative provided researchers with advanced tools for chemical genomics and drug discovery.
In 2012, the center transitioned to the Texas A&M Institute of Biosciences and Technology (IBT) in Houston. Since then the center’s growth has been significantly bolstered by multiple grants from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), including:
GCC-CDDP (2015, 2020): Funding for the Gulf Coast Consortium’s Combinatorial Drug Discovery Program, supporting high-throughput screening and combinatorial drug discovery efforts.
HTFCP (2019): Establishment of the High Throughput Flow Cytometry Program, enhancing capabilities in flow cytometry for drug discovery and research.
MLOTS (2021): Creation of the Micro-physiological Lead Optimization and Toxicity Screening center, focusing on lead optimization and toxicity assessment using micro-physiological systems.
In September 2023, the center expanded into the state-of-the-art TMC3 Helix Park campus in Houston. This strategic move has significantly enhanced the center’s infrastructure and collaborative potential. The relocation has enabled the center to integrate advanced artificial intelligence (AI) methodologies into ligand design, streamlining the identification of promising therapeutic candidates. Additionally, the new infrastructure supports sophisticated synthetic medicinal chemistry for both small molecule and peptide-based therapeutics, facilitating the design, synthesis, and optimization of novel compounds.
The center also plays a pivotal role in training the next generation of scientists through programs like the Gulf Coast Consortium Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hub (GCC-REACH) and the Cancer Therapeutics Training Program (CTTP). GCC-REACH assists entrepreneurs in strategic planning for management and operations, providing resources and support to achieve value-added commercialization inflection points. The CTTP is a multi-institutional training program that prepares post-doctoral trainees for future careers in drug discovery research in both academia and the pharmaceutical industry.
Through these developments, the Drug Discovery and Development Resource Center has become a pivotal resource for drug discovery and biomedical research, offering state-of-the-art technologies and expertise to researchers within Texas Medical Center community.