Moulder Center for Drug Discovery Research (MCDDR)
Chemistry Capabilities
The School of Pharmacy has three laboratories (Labs 515, 516 and 517) with approximately 3,000 square feet dedicated to the synthesis and purification of organic molecules.
The chemistry laboratories are well equipped to handle mg to kg scale small molecule synthesis. In house, analytical instruments include HPLC (analytical and preparative), LC-MS, and units for the purpose of high throughput parallel synthesis. In addition to standard synthetic chemistry capabilities, we perform parallel synthesis of diverse and/or focused libraries of 10s to 1000s of compounds on 10 - 100 mg scale. Reactions are carried out through the use of modern liquid handling equipment then purified with preparative HPLC purification and/or standard purification techniques. Characterization of all compounds will be conducted by the standard protocols required, to include minimally NMR, LC/MS, TLS, and melting point (if solid) with a minimum level of purity of 95% with the possibility of exceptions on a limited basis.
The chemistry laboratories are equipped with two dual fume hoods, one walk in fume hood, ten single fume hoods, several fitted with inert gas circuits, for solvent drying stills, rotary evaporators with water baths (four Buchi, one Brinkman, and a Labconco), a vacuum oven (Fisher), four high vacuum pumps, four glassware drying ovens, explosion-proof refrigerator/freezers (a Fisher and a Labline), two standard refrigerators (Fisher), two digitally controlled Vacuubrand diaphragm pumps with solvent recovery systems, a speedvac for parallel evaporation with vacuum trap and digital vacuum management, two rotary-vane high-vacuum pumps, a water bath heater/refrigerator with temperature control, two water bath heaters, an ISCO fraction collector, four flammable solvents cabinets (Aldrich), sonicators, a micro centrifuge and a bench top centrifuge.
Parallel Synthesis Lab: Recently purchased equipment for parallel synthesis includes a Gilson computer-controlled (Unipoint Software) semi-preparative HPLC UV/Vis system with a Model 215 Liquid Handler, a CEM Explorer microwave, a Gene vac Evaporator (EZ-2 Mk2), two Teledyne Isco Combiflash Rf, Agilent LC/MS instrument with PDA, two Heidolph rotary evaporators with water baths, two Rotavalve tec pumps, a Neslab RTE7 Thermo Fisher -20°C chiller, a Denver Instruments top loading balance. Miscellaneous equipment includes a variety of glassware (micro to 5L size) for synthesis (regular, air sensitive, reduced temperature) and column chromatography (semi-micro to macro), Mettler and Shimadzu balances, heating mantles, and hotplate magnetic stirrers, a Thomas Hoover melting point apparatus, a heating-stage microscope, a Hach UV-VIS spectrometer, a BD3010 lumino meter, a liquid scintillation counter, and two HP1050 HPLC systems (with auto samplers, quarternary solvent delivery systems, UC detectors).
Specific Analytical Instrumentation and Equipment:
- Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Instruments:
- School of Pharmacy: a Bruker 400 MHz NMR instrument on the same floor as the medicinal chemistry labs.
- Department of Chemistry NMR Facility: Bruker 300 MHz and 400 MHZ; and GE 500 MHz instruments.
- Mass Spectroscopy: School of Pharmacy Center for Bioanalysis and Pharmacokinetics
- X-ray Crystallography; collaboration with the Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania
- FT-IR Perkin-Elmer Model 1625
- Shimadzu UPLC system LC-20AD, vacuum degasser, quaternary solvent delivery system, semi-micromixer, column oven, manual injector, UV, RI, fluorescence, ELSD detectors, suitable for both HPLC and GPC applications (Lab 517)
- TA instruments Q200 modulated differential scanning calorimeter with RCS cooling unit (range -90°C — 400°C) (Lab 517)
- Malvern ZS Nano particle size analyzer with zeta potential measurement features (Lab 517)
