Cleveland synchrotron biosciences center receives $4 million grant

CLEVELAND, Ohio — A biomedical research center at Case Western Reserve University has received a $4 million National Institutes of Health grant to continue its work helping researchers investigate proteins and other molecules that could lead to designer drugs.

The five-year grant will help keep the Case Center for Synchrotron Biosciences open through 2014, according to a university press release. The center has been at the university since 2005, when its founder Mark Chance brought it with him when he came to CWRU from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. The CWRU facility is affiliated with a lab operated in the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, and the grant funds several employees there and in Cleveland.

The center will analyze some of the smallest and most important molecules in the body, using techniques including converting the energy of electrons into X-Rays. Among the work reviewed at the center are compounds, called immucillins, in the midst of clinical trials to treat certain cancers. It also helps examine research focusing on the effects of signals that impact g protein-coupled receptors, which could unlock treatments into everything from blood pressure to moods, Chance said.