Sustainable routes to anti-infective agents to combat future pandemics.

迫切需要新的抗感染药物，以对抗抗菌素耐药性，并在未来发生大流行时保护全球人口。今天用于治疗传染病的大多数药物都是由微生物产生的小分子，称为天然产物或其衍生物。随着病原体对这些分子产生耐药性，现有的抗感染药物已经变得不那么有效了。因此，如果我们要对抗新出现的抗菌素耐药性（AMR）并为未来的流行病提供治疗，我们就需要发现新的抗感染药物，并开发使这些分子结构多样化/优化的方法。在这个项目中，我们的目标是利用最先进的合成生物学技术，新型酶和综合催化来创造新的抗生素和新的抗病毒药物。酶的优势在于它们是高度选择性的、可持续的催化剂，在温和的条件下，在水中起作用。相反，传统的合成化学方法可能需要高温和有害溶剂。合成化学也可以是非选择性的，这是一种浪费，因为产生的副产品难以分离。我们还将开发生物催化和综合生物催化方法（工业生物技术），以更清洁和更可持续的方式创造新化合物的方法，最大限度地减少步骤之间的工作。将提供生物化学、催化、生物化学、酶学、结构生物学（x射线晶体学）、定向进化和合成生物学方面的培训

There is an urgent need for new anti-infective agents to combat antimicrobial resistance and to protect the global population in the event of future pandemics. The majority of drugs used to treat infectious diseases today are small molecules produced by microorganisms, called natural products, or derivatives thereof. The existing anti-infective agents have become less effective as pathogens evolve resistance to these molecules. Consequently, we need to discover new anti-infectives and also develop methods to diversify/optimise the structure of these molecules if we are to combat emerging antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and provide treatments for future pandemics. In this project, we aim to use state-of-the-art synthetic biology technologies, novel enzymes and integrated catalysis to create novel antibiotics and new anti-viral agents. Enzymes offer the advantage that they are highly selective, sustainable catalysts that function under mild conditions, in water. Conversely, traditional synthetic chemistry methods can require high temperatures and deleterious solvents. Synthetic chemistry can also be non-selective which is wasteful as by-products are produced that are difficult to separate. We will also develop biocatalysis and integrated biocatalysis approaches (Industrial biotechnology) to create methods to novel compounds in a cleaner and more sustainable manner minimising work up between steps. Training will be provided in biological chemistry, catalysis, biochemistry, enzymology, structural biology (X-ray crystallography), directed evolution and synthetic biology