UICentre is a drug discovery team at UIC established in 2013 as a campus-wide initiative that brings together scientists with expertise and skill sets representing a variety of disciplines in drug discovery and translational science.  We seek to identify focused projects that incorporate novel approaches aimed at the development of new therapeutics and form collaborative teams to advance these projects.  The expertise of the UICentre ranges from target validation and bioassay development to high-throughput screening analysis of novel compound libraries to medicinal chemistry incorporating structure-based, ligand-based and chemo-proteomics assisted drug design, in addition to pre-clinical DMPK studies.

Projects are created by exploiting critical mass at UIC in areas of research excellence and then supported by grant funding to advance potential new treatments for specific diseases.  Projects are selected by working closely with the Office of Technology Management (OTM) around invention disclosures made by faculty members.  In addition, several RFAs are issued each year to identify new projects that can enter our pipeline for discovery and development.

The mission of UICentre is to bring together members from UIC, pharmaceutical companies, start-up bioventures and other university partners possessing knowledge and experience in chemical, pharmaceutical and translational research with biomedical and clinical scientists at UIC to provide and support project-based collaborations focused on the discovery of novel chemical entities as viable clinical drug candidates.