UC San Diego Center for Drug Discovery Innovation

The CDDI connects scientists and enables discovery. When UC San Diego researchers discover the cause of a disease, they also identify new opportunities to create therapies. The CDDI helps researchers bring these opportunities to fruition by connecting promising projects with the information and capabilities needed to make real progress.

CDDI Mission and Goals

CDDI scientists aim to translate biomedical discoveries to new medications. They are also inventing new technologies to surmount the challenges of the complex drug-discovery process and navigate this process faster and more effectively.

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CDDI Faculty Investigators

The CDDI has more than 80 UC San Diego faculty participants across all major academic divisions of the campus. It includes the UC San Diego Center for Compound Resources, which provides exceptional libraries of natural products and other organic compounds for drug discovery and the UC San Diego Drug Development Pipeline, which carries out in vitro ADME and in vivo pharmacokinetics studies needed to progress a bioactive compound to clinical candidacy. CDDI researchers are inventing technologies to accelerate the process of drug discovery, and working on treatments for cancer, heart disease, infections, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, and other unmet needs.

CHARM Collaboration Contact: Thomas Hermann, PhD (Co-Director of cDDI)

CHARM ⬌ CDDI Collaborations

CHARM and CDDI Investigators collaborate on the discovery and optimization of drug leads against multidrug-resistant bacterial, fungal and parasitic pathogens. Interdisciplinary work includes novel cell-based screens, medicinal chemistry optimization, in vitro pharmacokinetic studies, and novel image-based in vivo challenges to assess therapeutic efficacy on the pathway to clinical development of new leads or drugs repurposed from other fields of medicine.

Drug for "Brain-Eating" Amoeba

Primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM) is a fatal infection caused by the free-living ameba Naegleria fowleri, popularly known as the "brain-eating ameba. CDDI and CHARM Investigators identified the blood-brain barrier permeable amebicidal compounds ebselen as a promising new drug lead for Naegleria infection.

Read at Frontiers in Microbiology

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