When
Presenter:
Dr. John S. Albin
Instructor, Massachusetts General Hospital, Infectious Diseases Division, Harvard University
Brief Biosketch
John Albin completed his MD-PhD training at the University of Minnesota followed by internal medicine residency and infectious diseases fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital and postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His current work focuses on engineering human host defense peptides as lead antibiotics and developing combinatorial chemistry methods to support the directed evolution of polyamides
Abstract
In the perpetual arms race between host and pathogen, the one unchanging rule is that of change itself. Resistance emerges as quickly as antimicrobials are deployed, and pathogens evolve to outmaneuver or simply overwhelm natural human defenses. The overarching goal of my research is to make it as easy for us to evolve antibiotics as it is for pathogens to evolve resistance. To do this, I use a traditional peptide chemistry toolbox to engineer human host defense peptides as lead antibiotics while developing methods to support the directed evolution of synthetic polyamide templates with an eye toward anticipating and obviating pathogen resistance. In this talk, I will cover my work on the development of antimicrobials based on human cathelicidin as well as the development of systems for making and analyzing quintillion-member chemical libraries for selection-based drug discovery.
Hosted by: Dr. Craig Aspinwall