Chemistry Weekly Seminar - Omar El-Halfawy, University of Regina
Omar El-Halfawy, Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair in Chemogenomics and Antimicrobial Research, University of Regina, will present a seminar at 1:30 pm in HLTH GB06.
Title
Understanding and targeting microbial virulence and antiobiotic resistance mechanisms to fight superbugs
Abstract
Infectious diseases pose a serious health problem with a considerable social and economic burden. Antimicrobial resistance is on the rise, where existing antibiotics fail to treat infections, whereas the antibiotic discovery pipeline has stalled in the last three decades. New and alternative approaches are required to address the current antibiotic crisis. Most efforts addressing this problem test microbes under standard lab conditions that do not resemble those at infection sites. Instead, we study microbes under infection-mimetic conditions to uncover clinically-relevant novel factors involved in microbial virulence and altered antibiotic resistance using high-throughput chemical genomics approaches. This talk will discuss our search for new antibiotic resistance and virulence targets. It will also cover some of our work to discover new antimicrobials that intend to cripple the microbes' ability to cause infection or resist antibiotics.
Date: Friday, March 31
Time: 1:30 pm
Place: HLTH GB06