With a three-year, $9.5 million grant, the Penn Center for Molecular Discovery has been created to test hundreds of thousands of molecules in search of new biological interactions. Housed at the Institute for Medicine and Engineering and directed by Dr. Scott Diamond, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, the center will be part of a nine-facility Molecular Library Screening Network set up by the National Institutes of Health. Researchers from around the world will have access to an enormous database amassed from the interactions of chemicals with biological targets such as viral enzymes.
