Timothy Spicer, Ph.D., and Louis Scampavia, Ph.D., use robotics and biochemistry to unearth potential new medicines.
When scientists discover something new about a disease, it presents an exciting opportunity to find a new treatment. But where to start? Discovering the needle in the haystack requires unique expertise and years of effort. Timothy Spicer and Louis Scampavia have made it their mission to speed up the process. They and their 12-member team have collaborated with research groups globally to discover lead molecules, the starting point for potential medicines, for a wide range of conditions. These include multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s disease; glioblastoma and other cancers; infectious diseases; age-related diseases; novel pain mediciens; inflammatory diseases; metabolic diseases, and more. They oversee the High-Throughput Molecular Screening Center at The Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation & Technology. It is an advanced drug discovery tool that is rarely found in academic or nonprofit settings. The Wertheim UF Scripps Institute deploys its industrial-style robots to do tens of thousands of experiments in a matter of hours, accelerating the quest to find new medicines.
New Antivirals The robotic drug discovery team at The Wertheim UF Scripps Institute plays a vital role in the U.S. preparedness effort against viral diseases with pandemic potential.
Cancer Fighters Innovations in drug discovery methods empower the search for precision cancer treatments.
Science at Scale Get to know the High-Throughput Molecular Screening Center at The Wertheim UF Scripps Institute.
The center’s team of engineers, chemists, biologists and technicians has an extraordinary track record. They have discovered dozens of lead compounds in collaboration with labs around the world. Their work has powered advances for people fighting cancer, brain disorders and diseases, neuromuscular diseases, addiction, metabolic diseases, aging, pain and more. They have helped the United States with pandemic preparedness and response needs. Their discoveries have enabled new scientific advances at labs around the world and the lead medicines they find are helping people lead healthier lives.
In its first two decades of operation, the Jupiter, Florida-based robotics team has collaborated on the discovery of 80 drug leads. Several have moved into clinical trials, including compounds to treat multiple myeloma and Parkinson’s. Their group also helped find the lead drug that eventually became Zeposia ® (ozanimod), which is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat ulcerative colitis and multiple sclerosis.
Robots at Work
Inside the center, a visitor will find several rooms. In the first, scientists miniaturize experiments so that results can be easily understood by computer. In the next, scientists prepare samples like cancer tissue, cells or proteins that will become the basis for the tiny experiments. In another area, compound collections are assembled. The center boasts more than 665,000 different compounds, each selected for its likelihood of possessing drug-like activity.
Farther back, in a darkened room behind double doors, two robots whirr away, much like the robots that build cars. Stationed around the robot arms are towers of chemical cartridges; incubators that nurture cells or tissue; racks of test tube plates the size of a deck of cards, and pin needle tools that dip into the chemical plates and drop them into the sample plates, then cover the plates with lids.
In a corner, a plate reader awaits its opportunity to see which wells light up or go dark on a grid-like screen akin to a Battleship game. Quality control systems check and double check that the equipment is producing useful results. This system runs seven days a week, 24 hours a day, searching for cures.
Finding a “hit” is just the beginning. The team works with highly skilled medicinal chemists and drug metabolism experts to refine the compounds to make them better candidates for medicines. They must be both potent and selective. Eventually, the lead molecules will be tested in vivo and, hopefully, clinical trials.
Spicer and Scampavia work as a team, Scampavia brings a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Washington, Seattle, a bachelor’s in genetics from the University of California, Berkeley, and decades of expertise in the biotechnology industry developing new methods to enable effective robotic drug screening. Spicer, with a master’s in microbiology from the State University of New York Health Science Center and a doctorate in medicine from the University of Queensland, Australia, brings decades of pharmaceutical industry experience conducting large-scale drug discovery campaigns. Together, their chemistry and biology expertise and industry experience make them leaders in their field. They also help train the next generation of scientists and engineers by mentoring post docs, teaching grad students and interns every year.
The High Throughput Molecular Screening Center at The Wertheim UF Scripps Institute is a world-class drug screening center recognized by the National Institutes of Health for its high impact and effectiveness. Its highly collaborative experts, led by Scampavia and Spicer, work with other scientists in Florida and around the world, enabling them to find new lead medicines for patients awaiting hope.
