Christian Melander

Equity Interest - Non-publicly traded entity ( e.g., stock, stock option, or other ownership interest)

Gold Nanocrystal Antibiotics for the Treatment of Multidrug-resistant Gram Negati

The Center for Disease Control estimates that each year 2 million people in the US will acquire an infection while in a hospital, resulting in 100,000 deaths and $30 billion of direct costs. Multi-drug resistant bacterial infections present an enormous ongoing challenge and infections now occur that are resistant to all current antibacterial options. The pipeline of novel therapeutics to treat drug-resistant infections, especially those caused by Gram-negative pathogens, is all but dry. There is an urgent, immediate need for new treatments for these panresistant organisms and there is no evidence that this need will be met in the foreseeable future. This has prompted the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) to issue a call for action from the medical community to provide solutions to this problem. Our labs have used a new combinatorial synthesis and screening approach to identify ligand-modified gold nanoparticles with potent activity toward bacterial growth inhibition. The goal of this projec is to determine the mechanism(s) of activity so that optimized formulations may be advanced for use in an animal model of infection.