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Dr. Nadja Cech
University of North Carolina - Greensboro
Natural products as antimicrobial leads: What would it take to find the next penicillin?
Wednesday, February 05, 2025
C9000 @ 3:30 p.m.
Host: Dr. Roger Linington
Abstract
Since Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin sparked the antibiotic revolution, intense interest has been focused on natural products as sources of antimicrobial agents. Antimicrobial drug discovery from natural products has been fruitful; of the five major classes of antibiotics used clinically today, four are based on molecules produced by nature. However, despite tremendous progress towards finding novel chemistry (i.e. new structures), developing new synthetic routes, and elucidating new biosynthetic mechanisms, it has been more than three decades since a new class of antibiotics received FDA approval. The pipeline for structurally diverse antimicrobial leads is depleted, while resistance continues to develop to existing antibiotics. This seminar will highlight some examples of antimicrobial and antivirulence leads identified from fungal and bacterial sources, demonstrating pitfalls and opportunities in antimicrobial discovery and discussing some of the critical barriers towards successful antimicrobial development.
Speaker Biography
Dr. Nadja B. Cech is Patricia A. Sullivan Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. She supervises a dynamic research group devoted to identifying novel and medicinally useful molecules from plants and fungi. Dr. Cech is the recipient of the 2024 Schwarting Award from the Journal of Natural Products, the 2017 Thomas Norwood Award for Undergraduate Research Mentorship, and the 2022 Board of Governors Teaching Excellence Award from the University of North Carolina System. Dr. Cech is a Principal Investigator for the National Institutes of Health funded Center for High Content Functional Annotation of Natural Products, Co-Director of the Analytical Core for the Center of Excellence for Natural Product Drug Interaction, and Co-Director of the Medicinal Chemistry Collaborative.