NFCR Center for Computational Drug Design

National Foundation for Cancer Research
Monday, 21 August 2000

Oxford University Chemistry Department today announced the creation of the NFCR Center for Computational Drug Design. The Center will be financed by a $750,000 grant from the Bethesda, Maryland based National Foundation for Cancer Research. It will be directed by Professor Graham Richards, Chairman of Chemistry at Oxford University, and an international leader in the field.

The Center will be unusual, if not unique, in being a virtual center with its hub in Oxford but involving initially collaborators in Spain, Portugal and Italy as well as a group in London all linked through the internet. The aim is to develop methods and to design compounds which will serve as therapeutic agents against cancer.

The Center has been funded for an initial period of five years and may be extended to incorporate other research groups across the world.

Professor Richards said "This is a wonderful opportunity to utilise the internet and world wide web in order to amass a powerful set of groups who should be able together to make real inroads into the overwhelmingly important problem of anti-cancer drug design".

"The NFCR Center for Computational drug Design at Oxford is one of an international network of NFCR Centers that seek to foster synergistic interactions between scientists around the world," said Franklin salisbury, Jr., President of the National Foundation for Cancer Research. "With NFCR's flexible funding support, scientists at the Center would be able to do bold and blue-sky expolration which would lead to breakthroughs in new treatments and even a cure for cancer."

National Foundation for Cancer Research

The National Foundation for Cancer Research, a cancer related charity fully dedicated to advancing basic science research in the laboratory, was formed in 1973 to support research related to the prevention, treatment and cure of cancer. NFCR encourages and facilitates collaboration and the sharing of ideas and results among the scientists, enabling advances in one field to lead to progress across other fields in cancer research. NFCR has provided more than $170 million funding discovery-oriented research that has played a key role in many current breakthroughs in the prevention, diagnosis and new treatments of all types of cancer. NFCR calls this the "Laboratory Without Walls".

Oxford Chemistry Department

The Oxford Chemistry Department is the largest in the western world. Each year it produces 180 graduates who have completed a four-year Chemistry course which includes a full year of research; 80 doctorates; and has 60 tenured faculty. It was one of only two UK Chemistry Departments to receive a 5* rating in the last Research Assessment Exercise for which the work of 72 academics was submitted. The Department has produced four Nobel Laureates and has 10 Fellows of The Royal Society amongst its current staff. It has been particularly successful in creating spin-out companies, three of which have become public companies. For further information visit www.chem.ox.ac.uk.

For more information, or to contact National Foundation for Cancer Research, see their website at: www.researchforacure.com