Science & Society Distinguished Public Talks
Co-sponsored by the Albuquerque Section of the Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and its Life Members Affinity Group, Sigma Xi (the Scientific Research Society), the UNM Department of Physics & Astronomy, and the UNM Division of Continuing Education.
Presents
"The antibiotics resistance problem and some potential solutions"
by
Herman Sintim
Thursday, March 23, 2017 5:30 PM
Meet and Greet at 5
The University of New Mexico Conference Center, Auditorium
1634 University Blvd. NE
Pizza with the speaker will follow the lecture
Herman O Sintim is Drug Discovery Professor of Chemistry, Drug Discovery Center and Department of Chemistry, Purdue University at Purdue University. He obtained his BS in Medicinal Chemistry from the University College London and D.Phil. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Oxford, He then performed postdoctoral research in the chemistry of natural products at the University of Oxford and a second postdoctoral research in Chemical Biology investigating the rules that govern DNA replication at Stanford University. Before moving his laboratory to Purdue he was professor of chemical biology at the University of Maryland.
Abstract: According to the US centers for disease control and prevention (CDC), antibiotic-resistant pathogens make over 2 million Americans sick every year and over 23,000 deaths per year could be attributed to these bugs. There are a few pathogens, the so-called super-bugs, that are resistant to a plethora of antibiotics. In the last decade most of the antibacterial agents that were approved by the FDA met the same antibiotic resistance fate, probably because these agents were mere derivatives of existing drugs, for which resistant bacterial strains already existed. We are currently witnessing a cyclic dinucleotide revolution that promises to usher in a new class of antibacterial agents. In this talk, I will discuss some of our efforts to develop novel antibacterial agents that target bacterial communication networks, including cyclic dinucleotide signaling.