About
The Center for Chemical Biology of Infectious Disease (CBID) is an NIH Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) created in May 2016 to encourage basic research in the chemical biology of infectious disease field. It is a federal requirement (Stevens Amendment) to cite CBID Center (P20GM113117) contributions within the acknowledgement of any manuscript or publication.
Goals
The immediate short-term goal of the CBID is to provide the necessary mentor support and infrastructure to ensure the success of junior investigators in acquiring NIH funding. The long-term goal is to create a center that encourages basic research scientists to discover Chemical Biology of Infectious Disease and solution.
Assisting these investigators in guiding the progress of the center are the Internal Advisory Board (IAB) and the External Advisory Committee (EAC). The IAB reviews CBID activities twice a year and make recommendations to the PI and co-I for changes in the program's management and focus. The EAC meets twice a year, once by teleconference and once in a face-to-face meeting at the University of Kansas. During the latter meeting, members review the structure, function and scientific accomplishments of the program sponsored by CBID.
Organization
The center comprises three core facilities in addition to the administrative core. These are:
- The Infectious Disease Assay Development Core (IDAD) for assay development and high throughput screening technologies for identifying chemical probes against infectious disease targets,
- The Computational Chemical Biology Core (CCB) for structure- and ligand-based drug discovery, protein modeling, and chemoinformatics.
- The Synthetic Chemical Biology Core (SCB) for the synthesis of novel and commercially unavailable small molecules, fluorescent molecules, and peptides.
In addition, research projects and pilot projects are chosen based on their relevance to the theme of the proposal and the credentials of the young investigators.
Specific Aims
Provide a world-class environment, appropriately administered and staffed, to provide researchers access to key techniques relevant to the chemical biology of infectious disease. This aim will be accomplished through the effective functions and successful activities of an administrative core and three scientific cores facilities.
Support and enable junior faculty to build successful research programs through active mentorship, access to appropriate resources, and funding of meritorious programs. This will entail both the recruitment of investigators that have already formulated suitable projects (as ascertained through rigorous peer review) identification and the identification and mentoring of scientists who aspire to such projects in the near future.
Enhance infectious disease research throughout the regional scientific community by the recruitment of outstanding junior faculty, establishment of seminar series and other opportunities for scientific enrichment, and by providing core facility access to all interested researchers. This specific aim will build upon numerous commitments that the University of Kansas and partner institutions have already made to biomedical research in general and infectious disease biology in particular.
