Assistant professor speeds
up research
By Holly Summers
Staff
Writer
Purdue-funded research by a Purdue assistant professor
has created technology that will ultimately save lives by speeding pharmaceutical
research.
Hicham Fenniri, an assistant professor of chemistry,
works with a team of undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral student
researchers. They use combinatorial chemistry to find active compounds
using Fenniri’s patent-pending technique called DRED - Dual Recursive
Deconvolation.
This technique speeds drug research by reducing
the number of years it takes to find medicines. Fenniri said that combinatorial
chemistry is the science of molecular diversity and is used by every
major pharmaceutical company.
Fenniri said that if one could reduce the time
it takes to research these compounds, then billions of dollars would
be saved and the chances of finding a drug to fight disease would increase
greatly.
Researching compounds, Fenniri said, is just a
game of numbers. In the past, certain compounds to create drugs were
found in odd places. Researchers used to have to travel to a jungle
or shark-infested oceans, spending a minimum of six years isolating
drug combinations. Then researchers would spend another six years conducting
clinical trials.
With this new technology and using a combinatorial
library of synthetic compounds, researchers like Fenniri are able to
create their own jungle in the lab and can very quickly screen through
billions of compounds in a matter of months.
"Before, it was like trying to find a needle
in a haystack," said Fenniri.
However, with Fenniri's new technique he is able
to break up and identify billions of compositions in a few months.
Not only will this new technology speed drug research;
Fenniri said the implications down the road are huge. Because of the
time saved using the system, drugs will be cheaper, more quickly obtainable,
and life expectancy will rise by saving lives.
Fenniri estimated that his research has spent about
$150,000 since he started in spring of 1998. Fenniri receives funding
from Purdue and from the Trask Foundation, which supports innovative
research open to commercialization.
Fenniri received his Ph.D. from Louis Pasteur University
in France and attended The Scripps Research in La Jolla, Calif., as
a research associate before joining the faculty of the department of
chemistry at Purdue.
Fenniri has been studying combinatorial chemistry
since its breakthrough in the early 1990’s.
Speaking on behalf of his new technique, Fenniri
said, "With a little bit of luck you may come across something
that’s interesting, and if you use it carefully, you may make interesting
discoveries."
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