SLU Institute for Drug and Biotherapeutic Innovation

IDBI Mission

The IDBI leverages its members deep expertise in biology, engineering and chemistry to pursue development of therapeutics based primarily on medical need as part of the University’s mission to serve humanity. Further, the IDBI promotes the translation of University research through drug discovery and pre-clinical development in the following ways:

• Facilitating intra- and inter-institutional translational collaborations
• Facilitating external sponsorship of promising translational research
• Educating members and students on drug discovery and development
• Providing drug discovery consultations and tools to advance translational projects
• Providing Seed Grants to promising drug discovery research

Partnerships

The IDBI welcomes inquiries from potential partners seeking out disease area expertise or promising cutting-edge research, as well as those interested in access to our core facilities. IDBI members have in-depth experience and expertise in their field, providing the full range of skills needed for premier drug discovery and development.

• Membership expertise includes target identification and validation, primary drug screening, medicinal chemistry optimization of screening hits, pharmacological characterization, lead optimization, and clinical trials for novel therapeutics.
• IDBI operates physical service cores to provide access to key drug development steps, e.g., assay development, compound screening/counter screening, target validation, ADME/PK, and medicinal chemistry drug optimization.
• For its members, the IDBI operates a ‘virtual’ core, facilitating contractual service agreements with local and national service providers.
• The SLU research community also offers ready access to world class vivarium facilities, and world leading vaccine and therapeutic clinical trial capabilities.

Scope

IDBI members advance research encompassing a breadth of human and animal therapeutics with modalities such as small molecules, protein drugs, and cell and gene therapy. IDBI members also perform research in enabling technologies such as medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, animal models, therapeutic delivery technologies, structural biology, and computational biology. Many IDBI researchers have a special emphasis on diseases of outsize burden on underserved populations, rare diseases, and orphan or neglected diseases.

We are driven by our desire to identify and develop new therapies for the treatment of human diseases.