UTSA, SwRI to create synthetic process for antibiotic drug discovery

Blumberg and his co-PI, Stanton F. McHardy, associate professor in the UTSA College of Sciences, will focus on creating a pipeline of new polycyclic antibiotics. This class of antibiotics includes tetracyclines, commonly used to treat pneumonia; anthracyclines, used to fight a cancer; and polycyclic xanthones, natural compounds with known health benefits.

"Polycyclic xanthones offer a variety of potential therapeutic applications, but they haven't been assessed yet," said McHardy. "With the new synthesis process, we're hoping to rapidly access a unique class of chemical building blocks, structural analogs and new compounds."

The team plans to use the process to discover more effective tetracycline antibiotics and safer anthracycline treatments with fewer side effects. Blumberg and McHardy also hope to create synthetic polycyclic xanthones that can mimic natural analogues while delivering new mechanisms of action, or new ways of fighting infections.

To achieve their goals, Blumberg and McHardy say they'll tap into the unique reactivity of dendralenes, which are chemical compounds used to "glue" molecular fragments together in a single step. Their goal is to rapidly explore and discover new treatments while improving or finding new techniques to tweak the structure of existing antibiotics to improve safety, reverse resistance and combat AMR worldwide.