Zhaomin Yang
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA·Microbiology & Immunology
Antibiotics kill bacteria or stop them from growing. That creates strong pressure for resistant strains to survive and spread, making infections harder to treat worldwide.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Pharmacology
Biochemistry
- Topics
antibiotic resistance
antimicrobial resistance
antivirulence therapy
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2028
What they work on
- Improve the potency and selectivity of a novel small-molecule inhibitor of the bacterial type IV pilus through structure–activity relationship studies that systematically vary its chemical structure.
- Identify new chemical compounds that block the assembly or function of the type IV pilus by high-throughput screening with a new phenotypic assay platform.
- Establish a discovery pipeline for antivirulence drugs that disarm Gram-negative pathogens without killing them, aiming to reduce pressure for antibiotic resistance.
More about the research
An alternative is antivirulence therapy. Instead of killing bacteria, these drugs block the tools bacteria use to cause disease. Because the bacteria are not directly threatened, there may be less pressure for resistance to evolve.
Why it matters
Antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections are a growing global health threat. Drugs that disarm the type IV pilus could block infection without killing bacteria, which may slow the development of resistance. If successful, the work could lay groundwork for a new class of treatments for patients with antibiotic-resistant infections caused by Gram-negative pathogens.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
W Todd Lowther
Wake Forest University, NC·Biochemistry
Design and synthesize new compounds based on screening hits to explore the structure–activity relationships of hydroxyproline dehydrogenase (HYPDH) inhibitor scaffolds, improving potency, selectivity and drug-like properties.
William Wuest
Emory University, GA·Chemistry
Synthesize inhibitors inspired by the natural product peniciaculin, which likely mimic the cofactor ubiquinone, and test them against blight-causing plant pathogens using organic synthesis and microbiology.
Catherine Wakeman
Texas Tech University, TX·Microbiology & Immunology
Identify vulnerability tradeoffs, weaknesses that appear when antibiotic-resistant bacteria reshape their physiology to survive drug exposure, and test whether targeting them clears infection in a mouse chronic wound model.
The school
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University: 35 labs on PI Pages, $657M a year on research, 496 research doctorates a year.
More about Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
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