Molly B. Schmid, PhD
Professor, Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Focus Track Champion – Pharmaceutical Discovery and DevelopmentAntibiotics, Antimicrobial Drug Discovery, Biochemistry, Drug Discovery, Genomics, Infectious Diseases, Molecular Biology, Pharmaceutical Development, Proteomics
Dr. Schmid earned her undergraduate degree in biology from SUNY Albany and her Ph.D. in biology from the University of Utah. Before joining KGI, she spent ten years in the biotechnology industry in executive positions at Genencor International (Palo Alto, CA) and Microcide Pharmaceuticals (Mountain View, CA) and most recently as Senior Vice President of Preclinical Programs at Affinium Pharmaceuticals in Toronto, Ontario. Prior to working in the biotech industry, Dr. Schmid was an Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, a Searle/Chicago Community Trust Scholar and a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Fellow.
This course is designed to provide you with an understanding of how pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies discover new drugs. This course will focus on the discovery of small molecule drugs.
The Team Masters Project (TMP) is the capstone activity for second-year Master of Bioscience (MBS) students and for Postdoctoral Professional Masters (PPM) students. It is assigned 2-course credits each semester for a total of 4 course credits and a passing grade in both semesters is required for graduation with an MBS or PPM degree.
This course should provide the student with a deeper understanding of how pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies discover new drugs, and how larger companies manage their drug discovery portfolios
The focus of this course is on the concepts and practice of creating a new business. The course has many components in our attempts to make it realistic and useful, and these can be collected into two major categories: identifying and evaluating business opportunities, and conceiving, writing, executing and defending a business plan.
This course should provide students with a deeper understanding of the important role of Phase I studies in early pharmaceutical development. Students expand their knowledge of the business and scientific aspects of initiating first-time-in-human (FTIH) Phase I studies.
Liu H, Schmid MB. "Maturation of the biotechnology industry changes job opportunities for scientists". Journal of Commercial Biotechnology 2008 Oct 21;15:199-214
Schmid MB. "Battling Bad Bugs". Drug Discovery & Development 2008 May 8
Schmid MB. "Crystallizing new approaches for antimicrobial drug discovery". Biochemical Pharmacology 2006 Mar 30;71(7):1048-1056
Schmid MB. "Do targets limit antibiotic discovery?" Nature Biotechnology 2006;24(4):419-420.
Schmid MB, Kaplan N. "Reduced triclosan susceptibility in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus epidermidis". Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy 2004 Apr;48(4):1397-1399
Kimber MS, Martin F, Lu YJ, Houston S, Vedadi M, Dharamsi A, Fiebig KM, Schmid M, Rock CO. "The structure of (3R)-hydroxyacyl-acyl carrier protein dehydratase (FabZ) from Pseudomonas aeruginosa". Journal of Biological Chemistry 2004;279(50):52593-52602
Schmid MB. "Seeing is believing: the impact of structural genomics on antimicrobial drug discovery". Nature Reviews Microbiology 2004 Sep;2(9):739-746
Benton BM, Zhang JP, Bond S, Pope C, Christian T, Lee L, Winterberg KM, Schmid MB, Buysse JM. "Identification of new genes required for in vivo growth or survival of Staphylococcus aureus". J. Bacteriol. 2004;186(24):8478-89
Martin PK, Bao Y, Boyer E, Winterburg KM, McDowell L, Schmid MB, Buysse JM. "Novel locus required for expression of high-level macrolide-lincosamide-streptogramin B resistance in Staphylococcus aureus". Journal of Bacteriology 2002 Oct;184(20):5810-3
Schmid MB. "Structural proteomics: the potential of high-throughput structure determination". Trends in Microbiology 2002;10(10):S27-S31
Research Synopsis
Dr. Schmid's research at KGI combines two distinct areas of interest: antimicrobial drug discovery and innovation in the pharmaceutical industry and its challenges. The combination of these two areas gives KGI students real life scenarios of challenges that pharmaceutical companies face. Dr. Schmid's teaching and research focuses on how to make drug discovery faster, less risky and less expensive.
While an Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University, her research group discovered Topoisomerase IV in Salmonella typhimurium as well as a genetic strategy for identifying new antimicrobial targets. She is continuing her search for antimicrobial drugs at KGI.
Current Research Projects
Managing New Product Development in the Pharmaceutical Industry: Dr. Schmid's research efforts aim to better understand the lack of research productivity in the pharmaceutical industry. She has created methods allowing the identification and characterization of failed discovery-stage pharmaceutical projects, a subject that is typically difficult to measure and not often discussed. This information provides a measure of early stage research activities occurring in pharmaceutical companies. This analysis is used to assess the key bottleneck points in the pipelines of pharmaceutical companies and to assess project management decision-making during the lengthy, failure-prone pharmaceutical R&D process.
Fail Early-Fail Fast Decisions in Pharmaceutical New Product Development (in collaboration with J. Darroch, Ito & Drucker School of Management, Claremont Graduate University): Dr. Schmid has created a method to measure pharmaceutical failure rates by measuring "innovation litter," and is developing and applying metrics to measure "fail early, fail fast/fail cheap" (FEFF) decision-making. These steps will determine the shape of the drug discovery and development pipeline. By applying these methods, pharmaceutical discovery managers may better allocate R&D resources for optimum effectiveness. Efficiencies adopted by companies in this stage of the pharmaceutical new drug development process may provide an enormous opportunity for achieving a competitive advantage for the innovating firm.
Antimicrobial Drug Discovery: Professor Schmid's lab is combining old and new approaches to the search for promising lead compounds that can enter the antimicrobial drug development pipeline. She is partnering with academic and industrial collaborators in the US and Canada to identify and characterize novel molecules that have potential to be new antimicrobial agents. Her approaches combine new methods in structure-guided drug discovery, with genetic and genomic methods for target identification and validation.
US 5,962,249: Sized-based marker identification technology. Benton, B.; Bostian, K.; Schmid, M.B.; Sun, D.; Buysse J.M (1999)
US 6,037,123: Methods of screening for compounds active on Staphylococcus aureus. Benton, B.; Lee, V.; Malouin, F.; Martin, P.; Schmid, M.; Sun, D-X (2000)
US 6,187,541: Methods of screening for compounds active on staphylococcus aureus target genes. Benton, B.; Lee, V.; Malouin, F.; Martin, P.; Schmid, M.; Sun, D-X (2001)
US 6,228,588: Methods of screening for compounds active on Staphylococcus aureus target genes. Benton, B.; Lee, V.; Malouin, F.; Martin, P.; Schmid, M.; Sun, D-X (2001)
US 6,514,746: Staphylococcus aureus histidine protein kinase essential genes. Benton, B.; Malouin, F.; Martin, P.; Schmid, M.; Sun, D-X (2003)
US 6,630,303: Methods of screening for compounds active on Staphylococcus aureus target genes. Benton, B.; Lee, V.; Malouin, F.; Martin, P.; Schmid, M.; Sun, D-X (2003)
US 6,638,718:Methods of screening for compounds active on Staphylococcus aureus target genes. Benton, B.; Lee, V.; Malouin, F.; Martin, P.; Schmid, M.; Sun, D-X (2003)
Several additional patent applications are pending as US and PCT applications.
Contact Information
| Molly B. Schmid, PhD | ||
| Location: | Building 535, Room A21 | |
| Phone: | (909) 607-8565 | |
| Fax: | (909) 607-8086 | |
| molly_schmid[at symbol]kgi.edu | ||