Program in Antimicrobial Resistance and Drug Discovery

The Program in Antimicrobial Resistance and Drug Discovery is focused on tackling the third leading cause of death due to infectious disease worldwide - antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Program Goals:

  • Advance understanding on how existing antimicrobials act and define the mechanisms of bacterial drug resistance and drug tolerance through basic experimental research. 
  • Partner with clinicians and public health labs to expand the ability to monitor and identify emerging antibiotic resistance threats

Recent Development: New Assays to Help Streamline Drug Discovery

New work from the lab of Courtney Aldrich, PhD in theDepartment of Medicinal Chemistry and his collaborators focuses on expediting the drug discovery process to treat important infectious diseases such as Tuberculosis. 

They developed cell-based assays that utilize two-way regulation of protein expression to readily identify on-target inhibitors of essential genes in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. These assays can be used to supplement the traditional whole-cell screening process, which remains a powerful but often complicated and time-consuming process in screening potential drugs to inhibit the activity of Biotin Protein Ligase; BirA.

Antimicrobial Resistance and Drug Development UMIID

Image credit: Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1096/fasebj.2022.36.S1.L7723