Founding
The Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology (VICB) was founded in 2002 by Larry Marnett and Ned Porter. Initial funding through Vanderbilt’s Academic Venture Capital Fund (AVCF) supported the recruitment of 20 faculty members specializing in synthetic and medicinal chemistry, natural products, high-throughput screening (HTS), computational chemistry, nanotechnology, pharmacology, and metabolomics. These recruits, alongside 55 existing faculty, quickly established a robust chemical biology community.
Core Development
Key to the VICB’s early success was the development of core laboratories for High-Throughput Screening and Chemical Synthesis, fully established in 2005 as part of the NIH’s Molecular Libraries Screening Center Network (MLSCN). David Weaver served as the founding director of the VICB’s HTS Core and Gary Sulikowski as the founding director of the Chemical Synthesis Core, renamed in 2017 as the Molecular Design and Synthesis Center (MDSC). These core facilities, now under Joshua Bauer (HTS) and Plamen Christov (MDSC), continue to support innovative molecular probe design, discovery, and development, broadly enabling chemical biology research.
Educational Initiatives
Education remains central to VICB’s mission. Its seminar series attracts renowned chemical biologists from around the world, enriching Vanderbilt’s community. Graduate-level courses and NIH/NSF-funded training initiatives serve as a foundation of the community of graduate, postdoctoral, and undergraduate students. Annual student-organized research symposia and social initiatives through the Chemical Biology Association of Students foster a dynamic educational environment.
Notable Successes
Since its inception, VICB has significantly elevated Vanderbilt’s stature in chemical biology and drug discovery. Notable successes include establishment of the Warren Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery by Jeff Conn and Craig Lindsley, the Cancer Drug Discovery Program in Stephen Fesik’s lab, a center within the NCI Chemical Biology Consortium (NCI-CBC) network directed by Alex Waterson, and numerous collaborations advancing health-related discoveries. Highlights include:
- Isoform-selective phospholipase D inhibitors (Brown and Lindsley)
- Novel antibiotics targeting drug-resistant bacteria (Skaar and Sulikowski)
- Anti-anxiety agents targeting substrate-selective COX-2 inhibitors (Marnett and Patel)
- Mosquito olfactory signaling modulators (Zweibel and Waterson)
- Wnt signaling inhibitors (Ethan Lee and Waterson)
- Potassium channel function inhibitors (Denton, Weaver, and Lindsley)
- G-Protein Inward Rectifying Potassium (GIRK) ion channel modulators (Weaver, Lindsley and Sulikowski)
- STING agonists (Wilson and Christov)
- RAGE inhibitors (Chazin and Waterson)
- PET imaging agents for detecting apoptosis (Manning and Christov)
- Circadian rhythm modulators (Johnson and Sulikowski)
- NAPE-PLD activators (Davies and Sulikowski)