UIC Today and Molecular Cell report on work being done by Polikanov & Mankin labs
UIC Today has reported on research coming out of the labs of Dr. Yury Polikanov and Dr. Alexander Mankin. The two UIC professors have been collaborating with Nosopharm, a biotechnology company based in Lyon France, in the search for a new class of antibiotics that can combat multidrug-resistant bacteria. Their research is supported by the National Institutes of Health and was highlighted in a press release in UIC Today titled “A new class of antibiotics to combat drug resistance.” The full press release can be found here: https://today.uic.edu/a-new-class-of-antibiotics-to-combat-drug-resistance.
In addition to the press release, their paper was chosen for publication by the journal Molecular Cell and was selected by the editors as a featured article in the April edition. All of the first authors of the article, including Dr. Polikanov’s PostDoctoral Research Associate Malgorazata Dobosz-Bartoszek, currently appear on the home page of Molecular Cell.
Molecular Cell provided a brief summary of the paper:
The spread of multidrug-resistant bacteria has prompted a renewed interest in antibiotics with novel chemical scaffolds and mechanisms of action. Pantel et al. describe a previously unknown class of ribosome-targeting antibiotics, odilorhabdins (ODLs). They reveal the binding site of ODLs in the decoding center of the small ribosomal subunit and show that these inhibitors render the ribosome error prone. Odilorhabdins exhibit bactericidal activity against Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens and are able to cure bacterial infection in animal models.
The home page of Molecular Cell and the full text of the article can be found here:
http://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/home
http://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/fulltext/S1097-2765(18)30226-0
http://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/fulltext/S1097-2765(18)30182-5