Drug Screening Lab

Newly equipped with multifunctional 96-384-wells plate readers, the high-throughput drug screening (HTS) robotic system allows us to perform fluorometric, calorimetric and luminometric assays for drug screening. The HTS system now serves as a HTS satellite center of the Gulf Coast Consortium of Chemical Genomics group led by Peter Davies, M.D., Ph.D., Provost and Executive Vice President of UTHSC-Houston.

LC/MS/MS Lab

LC/MS/MS is an advanced instrument used for identification of biomedical markers, synthetic drugs, molecular and cellular metabolism. The technology has been widely used for biomedical and pharmaceutics research.

Laser Doppler Lab

Laser Doppler Blood Flow Detection System and Laser Doppler Imaging system have been purchased and set up in the center. The systems are very useful for testing the molecular, cellular and drug functions affecting vascular and thrombosis systems in animals.

Stem/Stromal Cell Cultures and Gene Expression Lab

Our technology and facility are available for large-scale cell culture, stem and stromal cell isolation and culture and gene expression in mammalian cells.

Pharmacoinformatics Computational Lab

Three SGI workstations with Insight II and Felix software for molecular structural studies and a Dell cluster computer with Tripos Sybyl Virtual Drug screening software are powerful tools in the center used for experiment-based drug development.

Natural Product Screening Lab

The established stable cell lines expressing drug targets such as thromboxane A2 receptor (mediated stroke and heart disease), prostaglandin E2 synthase and receptor (mediates inflammation and cancers) and the purified drug targets are used in combination with natural products screening and could lead to new drug discovery. The studies have led to the formation of established collaborations with Louis Williams, Ph.D. (UH College of Pharmacy); Zhang-Jiang, Zhang, M.D., Ph.D. (Chinese medicine College in Hong Kong University); and Aiming Huang, M.D. (Fujian Medical University, China).

Center researchers also are collaborating with scientists in the University of Texas Health Science Center-Houston (UTHealth), Texas Heart Institute, Institute of Molecular Medicine, The University of Texas-M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and Baylor College of Medicine.