The UBC collection of about 900 small molecules with defined activity consists of compounds have been obtained throughout the years through licensing agreements and MTA’s with companies and non-for-profit organizations.
Chemical libraries:
- Medicine for Malaria Venture Pathogen Box: This open access plate contains 400 lead molecules with activity against TB, malaria, toxoplasmosis or kinetoplastids.
- 317 GSK kinase inhibitors obtained through the public-private partnership targeting the human kinome.
- Over 500 compounds targeted against signalling targets obtained from industrial collaborators.
Natural products:
For screening efforts we use marine sponges and marine microbial extracts as the source of marine natural product structural diversity.
- The NCI Open Repository collection contains ~30,000 extracts of marine organisms (invertebrates and algae) collected in tropical oceans around the world. These are available in 96 well-format screening plates. Multigram quantities of each extract are available for further study once an active extract has been identified.
- The Pfizer collection consists of 1200 freeze dried specimens of marine sponge (≈95%) and other invertebrate (≈ 5%) samples collected in Pohnpei, the Phillipines, Indonesia, Palau and South Africa. When Pfizer closed their natural products discovery program, they donated this sample collection to Prof. Raymond Andersen at UBC, free of rights.
- Andersen’s own collection consists of > than 5,000 frozen sponge specimens collected in BC, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Thailand, Norway, and Dominica and > 6,000 isolates of microorganisms obtained from tissues of sponges and marine sediments collected in oceans worldwide.