Over the years, bacteria, fungi and protozoa have increasingly developed resistance to traditional antibiotics. In particular fungi and protozoa are recognized as emerging problems; in the past 25 years the number of life threatening infections caused by these organisms due to their resistance to traditional drugs has been growing with reports that metronidazole has a 40% failure rate in treatment of giardiasis. Research on new medicines to fight these infections is a focus of our labs. In collaboration with Sid Das we are targeting enzymes in these organisms that synthesize necessary components of their cell walls. The cell wall is an attractive target since it is required by the pathogens for growth, but has no counterpart in humans and other mammals.
