Antibiotic Resistance Up Close: A Structural Biologist View on a Global Health Threat

Dr. Albert Berghuis

Distinguished James McGill Professor and Chair
Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences
McGill University

The dangers antibiotic resistance poses to human health needs little introduction. Statistics, such as that already over one million deaths annually are directly attributable to resistant bacteria, have been well publicized. The WHO has advocated a multi-pronged approach to address this global health threat, which includes developing new medicines. Dr. Berghuis’s lab has used structural biological approaches to examine various mechanisms of antibiotic resistance, with the objective of informing the development of new therapeutic options for treating bacterial infections. Notably, they have examined enzyme-mediated resistance to aminoglycoside and macrolide antibiotics. Their findings have underscored the difficulties of drug development in the contexts of wide-spread multi-drug resistance, but have also revealed viable avenues to combat resistance.

Wednesday, Nov. 23, 1 p.m.

CSF-1302, Core Science Facility