MCMP Graduate Program - Facilities and Instrumentation

The Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology is located in the Robert E. Heine Pharmacy Building and the Hansen Life Sciences Research Building. These buildings are equipped with a variety of special resources, such as fermentation areas, an electronics shop, cold rooms and a greenhouse. The University maintains a cell culture laboratory for growing normal and malignant human and animal cells in vitro. This facility is used campus-wide by researchers seeking to uncover new anticancer drugs. A wide variety of state-of-the-art instrumentation is available for analytical, radiochemical, biochemical, physiological, cellular and molecular studies. This includes specialized equipment for spectrophotometric, centrifugal, fluorometric, microscopic, chromatographic and isotopic analyses.

There are several Fourier transform nuclear magnetic resonance (FT-NMR) spectrometers available for both solution and solid-state investigations. The 500-MHz Varian VXR-500 and 300-MHz Bruker ARX, located in the Pharmacy Building, and the AC-250 MHz with the CP-MAS module, located in Hansen Life Sciences Research Building, are fully equipped for observation of the complete range of NMR-active nuclei (including ¹H, ²H, ¹³C, ¹⁵N, ¹⁷O, ¹⁹F, and ³¹P). Its versatile hardware configuration and Sun computer system enable us to run all modern one- and two- dimensional NMR experiments.

The state-of-the-art mass spectrometry facility has both low and high resolution instruments, including a Finnigan Model MAT 95XL high performance, high resolution sector mass spectrometer, a Finnigan 4023 GC-MA mass spectrometer with a NOVA-4 data system, and a Finnigan LCQ MSn/DS mass spectrometer interfaced with an HPLC, which are used for routine as well as highly specialized analyses of a wide variety of chemical and biochemical substances. Ionization methods of these instruments include electron ionization (EI), chemical ionization (CI), fast atom bombardment (FAB), and electrospray ionizations (ESI). Specialized analyses include high resolution exact mass analysis for determining molecular formulas, tandem mass spectrometry experiments (MS/MS) for structure elucidation, and the direct coupling of HPLC separations with the mass spectrometer for mixture analysis. This laboratory is part of the Campus-wide Mass Spectrometry Facility and is available to the entire Purdue research community.

Also available are digital imaging and processing instrumentation; PCR; DNA synthesis and analysis -instrumentation; FT-IR, UV-visible, and ORD-CD spectrophotometers; an X-ray diffractometer; liquid scintillation counters; preparative and ultra centrifuges; an automated peptide synthesizer; fluorescence--activated flow cytometers; a wide variety of chromatography equipment (including GC's and HPLC's, HPLC flow detectors for radioisotopes, and diode--array UV--visible HPLC detectors); an electron microscope; and a wide variety of computers for data analysis, on-line access to bibliographic and molecular databases, and molecular graphics and modeling.

Elsewhere on campus, we have ready access to 500- and 600-MHz NMR spectrometers, GC-MS mass spectrometers, a plasma desorption mass spectrometer, a MALDI time of flight mass spectrometer, automated oligonucleotide synthesizers and sequencers, and protein microsequenators.

The Pharmacy Library maintains a collection of more than 40,000 volumes and subscribes to the major journals and abstracts in all of the School's areas.