Clayton Medical Research Foundation Inc

The Novel Biologically Active Peptides and Small Proteins grant to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies funds research. The overreaching hypothesis of this project is that novel drug targets exist among the thousands of newly discovered microproteins. The list includes uncharacterized secreted bioactive peptides and small proteins. In the past two years the focus has shifted from intracellular microproteins to uncharacterized secreted bioactive peptides because they are similar to peptide hormones and neuropeptides, which have proven expellant drug targets. Consequently, this project has three aims: the deep characterization of C4ORF48 in neurobiology and Alzheimer's disease (Aim 1), the role of augurin in metabolic health and cancer (Aim 2), and the continued identification of novel peptides to feed into this pipeline (Aim 3). As part of these broader efforts, tools have been developed for this project, such as ShortStop, to find and characterize these novel bioactive peptides.

The MorfVeuss Discovery, Screening and Therapeutic Platform grant to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies funds research to develop a screening platform, called MorfVeuss, that will allow the discovery of micro-peptide drug targets while transforming these discoveries into gene and oncolytic viral therapeutic candidates. The objective of this platform is to overcome a critical unmet need in identifying and characterizing a novel class of therapeutics, building from very recent discoveries in the past decade in the emerging field of micro-proteins. Development of this platform should open the door for new breakthroughs and a pipeline of innovative new drug candidates, applicable across different indications.

The Foundation funded 2 other medical research grants and project administration expenses at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies. The titles of the 2 additional grants are as follows: (1) Identification of functional markers for developing side effect-free non-opioid analgesics

(2) Bifunctional Small Molecules for Rapid Protein Clearance from Blood