Higuchi Biosciences Center - University of Kansas

NIH renews grants to projects led by KU's Georg
A senior University of Kansas medicinal chemistry professor has been awarded a $10.4 million federal grant for cancer research and an $8 million grant to find compounds for male contraception.

Gunda Georg, university distinguished professor in KU’s School of Pharmacy and director of the Center for Cancer Experimental Therapeutics at the Kansas Masonic Cancer Institute, recently received a five-year grant from from the Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) program, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, to mentor fellow faculty members across Kansas and support their promising research in the battle against cancer. The NIH previously awarded Georg a similar $10 million grant in 2000 that ended this summer.

Under the first grant, at least 17 KU faculty members were awarded COBRE Project Awards and 14 researchers were awarded COBRE First Awards. In addition, the university was able to establish the KU High Throughput Screening Laboratory. Under the direction of Qi-Zhaung Ye, research professor at the Higuchi Biosciences Center, the laboratory provides state-of-the-art equipment to screen hundreds of thousands of chemical compounds for biomedical research.

The new grant will continue to bring together researchers, working through the therapeutics center, from KU, the University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas State University, Wichita State University and Emporia State University. The grant places an emphasis on developing promising cancer research efforts of junior faculty members. “I am honored that COBRE has awarded KU a second grant to continue the promising research we have undertaken during the past five years,” Georg said. “This funding commitment shows that KU is a major contributor to promoting the work of researchers in finding treatments for cancer.”

In addition to cancer research, the grant will foster mentoring relationships between the therapeutic center's senior staff and junior researchers, as well as contribute to KU's efforts to establish a prestigious National Cancer Institute Designated Cancer Center at KUMC. “The COBRE program is a major success story for the University of Kansas and our efforts to build the university into a major research center to find treatments and cures for cancer,” said KU Chancellor Robert Hemenway. “This proves once again that Dr. Georg is a nationally recognized scientist of great talent.”

Earlier this year, a five-year NIH contract was awarded to Georg and a team of University of Kansas and Kansas University Medical Center researchers to find chemical compounds to develop into reversible male contraceptives. The contract will allow the scientists from the two campuses to continue research and testing started in partnership with the NIH four years ago. The KU team is one of only a few research groups in the world working to develop male contraceptives. In addition to Georg, the team’s primary members are Joseph Tash, associate professor of molecular and integrative physiology at KUMC; Qi-Zhuang Ye, research professor at the Higuchi Biosciences Center; and Ernst Schonbrunn, assistant professor of medicinal chemistry.

KU was able to win the contract, in part, because of the research facilities available at the university, including the High Throughput Screening Laboratory. While High Throughput Screening (HTS) technology is more common in private industry, KU is one of the few universities in the nation to have one. Without the HTS lab, screening hundreds of thousands of compounds could take up to a year. HTS technology dramatically reduces that screening time. “The NIH awarded this research contract to us because of the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of our team, as well as the technology and laboratories KU and KUMC have for testing,” said Georg, who is also director for the Center for Drug Discovery at the Higuchi Biosciences Center on the Lawrence campus.

In its work under the previous NIH contract, the KU team identified a chemical compound they named Gamendazole that caused temporary infertility in male rats by affecting sperm production. Gamendazole, on which KU has filed a patent application, emerged from more than 100 compounds tested.

The group also focused on finding novel inhibitors of key enzymes that either have an important role in sperm development or motility. Finding chemical compounds to temporarily deactivate the enzymes so that the sperm do not fully develop or cannot move to cause pregnancy is the key objective of the research. “We need to find compounds that are potent, selective and can be developed to be taken orally,” said Tash. “We do not want a compound to affect other enzymes in the body. We want to specifically target the right enzyme and nothing else.”

All the testing of compounds to date has taken place with rats and in test tubes. In the case of Gamendazole, human clinical trials could take place in three to four years with the approval of federal regulators.

Higuchi Biosciences Center
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