Carl Nathan (Weill Cornell Medical College)

Overcoming Phenotypic Tolerance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Date
Apr 5, 2017, 12:00 pm12:00 pm
Location
Thomas Laboratory, 003
Audience
Free and open to the university community and the public.

Speakers

Carl Nathan
Professor and chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology
Weill Cornell Medical College, Cornell University

Details

Event Description

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the world’s top health challenges. Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the single leading cause of death from infectious disease, may cause the greatest number of infections characterized by AMR and is becoming progressively incurable. The most familiar form of AMR is heritable, but non-heritable AMR—phenotypic tolerance—is one of the major factors that make tuberculosis difficult to treat. My lab is taking three routes to search for compounds active against Mtb in states in which it is phenotypically tolerant to most TB drugs: whole cell screening under non-replicating conditions; target-based screening against enzymes that Mtb needs to survive under stresses that block its replication; and testing active agents from those screens against Mtb in a state where it can no longer form colonies on solid media, yet retains the potential to cause disease.

Sponsor
Mark Brynildsen, Department of Molecular Biology
Event Category
Butler Seminar Series