Dr. Courtney Aldrich

Dr. Courtney Aldrich’s lecture was based on the design of antibiotics that target biotin metabolism. Dr. Aldrich is an associate professor in the Center for Drug Design at the University of Minnesota. He also got his PhD from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Aldrich is working on the synthesis of a new antibiotic for patients with tuberculosis. The first antibiotics were developed in the early 1330’s, in Germany. The introduction of antibiotics increased the average life span by 25 years. The last antibiotic was introduced in 1987. Scientists have not created new antibiotics since then, thus making this period “the discovery void.” There are two popular ways to create antibiotics: phenotypic whole cell screening and biased-target based rationale. Tuberculosis is an old disease but there are newer and more drug resistant forms of the disease. The goal of Dr. Aldrich’s research is to inhibit the biotin pathway so that the bacterium is not able to replicate and multiply inside of the host cell. Dr. Aldrich and his team believe that if they target specific Bio enzyme A in the biotin pathway that will serve as a road block to tuberculosis. Dr. Aldrich’s research is very complex and time consuming; hopefully he will succeed in his research and come up with an antibiotic for tuberculosis.


 
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