| Start Date: | 12/4/2014 | Start Time: | 4:30 PM |
| End Date: | 12/4/2014 | End Time: | 5:30 PM |
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Event Description
William M. Wuest, PhD, assistant professor of chemistry,
Department of Chemistry, Temple University
"Draining the Moat: A Natural Product-Inspired Approach to Combat Biofilms"
The importance of natural products as anticancer and antibiotic compounds is undisputed due to their wide application as potent and effective pharmaceuticals. In contrast, the investigation of natural products toward biofilm-implicated bacterial infections, a rising concern among scientists and medical professionals, has been significantly understudied. Biofilm formation is the first line of defense for many bacteria similarly to how a moat protects a castle, and it is this defense that makes them so hard to combat. Over the past three years our group has looked to Nature for inspiring chemical scaffolds and have identified promising candidates that perturb bacterial biofilms. Two ongoing projects, which focus on cyclic diguanylate monophosphate (c-di-GMP) and norspermidine, will be discussed in detail.
C-di-GMP is an important nucleotide signaling molecule in many pathogenic bacteria. Our group has initiated a bioorganic venture toward the synthesis and biological evaluation of a library of rationally designed analogs with the dual purpose to act both as biofilm inhibitors and chemical probes. Specifically, our work focuses on the construction of non-hydrolyzable, cell-permeable analogs with discrete conformations that incorporate charge neutral phosphate bioisosteres to replace the natural phosphate linkages. In contrast to the chemical complexity of c-di-GMP, norspermidine represents a simpler starting point for synthetic investigation. Earlier reports indicated that the polyamine possessed interesting antibiofilm activity and our group sought to expand these findings to a class of quaternary ammonium cationic (QAC) analogs constructed in collaboration with the Minbiole Group at Villanova University. Over the past year we have synthesized and evaluated over sixty synthetic analogs and identified some of the most potent biofilm-eradicating compounds to date. The talk will highlight the conceptualization of the research hypotheses of both projects, the synthesis and evaluation of each class of analogs, and the current progress toward the construction of c-di-GMP analogs and solid-supported QAC antibiofilm surfaces. |
Contact Information:
Name: Prof. Frank Ji
Phone: 215.895.2562
Email: hj56@drexel.edu |
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Location:
Disque Hall, Room 109, 32 South 32nd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19135 |
Audience:
AlumniCurrent StudentsFacultyProspective StudentsGraduate Students |
Special Features:
Free Food |
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