Whenever I talk to prospective graduate students, I like to discuss my most outlandish ideas. It is a risk, but it helps attract the kinds of people who are well suited to work in my lab.
The goal of this Killam Research Fellowship project is to develop broadly applicable technology to discover therapeutic agents that contain boron. The ultimate application of this research is to discover novel molecules to combat antimicrobial resistance. Antimicrobial resistance takes place when drugs that used to be effective against a particular pathogen fail to work because the disease-causing microbe has become resistant to the treatment. The project’s goal is to leverage the unique properties of boron in effort to combat antimicrobial resistance. The project will place boron in strategically significant positions of small molecules, turning them into powerful antimicrobial agents.
Photo credit: Chris Kubinec and Atilla Soylu
