The Healing Power of Chemistry: Cutting Edge Antibiotic and Gene Therapy Research

As part of ACS’s celebration of NCW (October 15-21), Dr. Jayanta Haldar (Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research) will discuss the growing threat posed by drug-resistant bacteria through his work with Vancomycin, a blockbuster antibiotic that has been lifesaving against multidrug-resistant Gram-positive infections. The increased prevalence of vancomycin-resistant bacteria and the inherent challenges of complicated infections highlight the urgent need to develop credible alternatives to Vancomycin. Dr. Haldar will describe his work towards designing multi-target acting next-generation analogues which possess additional modes of action and have demonstrated superior efficacy in tackling vancomycin resistance in Gram-positive as well as Gram-negative bacteria, including multidrug-resistant strains.

Then, Dr. Karmella A. Haynes (Emory University School of Medicine) will discuss her lab’s research into chromatin, the DNA-protein structure that packages eukaryotic genes, and their work to investigate and design chromatin-based systems for controlling gene expression in cancer. Her lab’s approach, which they call “macrogenomic engineering,” uses histone-binding protein motifs to build fusion transcription factors that co-regulate groups of genes based on their chromatin features. In her talk, Dr. Haynes will discuss how these systems could be useful in activating anti-cancer gene expression to empower the body to intrinsically fight off cancer.

What You Will Learn

• How bacteria develop resistance to drugs
• What are Glycopeptide antibiotics, their mechanism of action, and concerns about resistance
• Research into next-generation glycopeptides to tackle resistance and complicated infections
• What is chromatin and its role in gene expression
• How chromatin-based systems can be designed to activate anti-cancer gene expression
• Other gene therapy applications of chromatin-based systems

Meet The Experts

Jayanta Haldar, Editor-in-Chief, ACS Infectious Diseases

Karmella A. Haynes, Assistant Professor, Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Emory University

Catherine Goodman, Senior Associate Publisher, American Chemical Society