The term “molecular glue degraders” may sound like the next K-pop band, but inside the lab of biochemist Thomas Kodadek, Ph.D., scientists are rocking MGDs for a serious purpose: finding treatment options for people with incurable diseases, including aggressive cancers and brain diseases.

Their goal is to exploit cells’ own internal recycling systems to address these otherwise “undruggable” diseases. A new grant from Europe is accelerating that work.

Kodadek’s team at The Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation & Technology recently won a worldwide competition to collaborate with the research and development department of the health care company Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.

Read more about Grant Glues Together Research Experts To Tackle Incurable Diseases.

Chemist Thomas Kodadek, Ph.D., has been awarded a Transformative Research Award grant worth up to $4.1 million over five years to study whether new potential therapeutics designed to lure disease-driving proteins directly into cells’ internal disposal machinery could be a promising strategy against cancer and other diseases.

Kodadek is a chemistry professor at The Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation & Technology in Jupiter, Florida, and a member of the UF Health Cancer Center. It is Kodadek’s third Transformative Research Award. He also received an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award in 2005.

“These grants support unconventional approaches to major biomedical research challenges,” Kodadek said. “We hope to be able to make major inroads developing a new class of drug candidates using these resources.”

Mohammed Gbadamosi, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, has secured a High Risk-High Reward grant called an Early Independence Award. Gbadamosi’s grant, worth up to $1.25 million over five years, will enable him to launch his own independent academic research laboratory.

Gbadamosi said he will build a multidisciplinary research team within the college focused on developing treatment strategies that combine chemotherapy and immunotherapy to combat aggressive breast cancer and other cancers impacted by health disparities.

Applying artificial intelligence, his lab plans to construct computer models for personalizing combined treatment strategies based on a patient’s tumor genetics, he said. The High Risk-High Reward program’s early independence awards enable exceptional junior scientists to skip traditional postdoctoral training and move immediately toward independence.