Natural Products: The Inspiration for New Antibiotics

A large proportion of pharmaceuticals currently in use are either natural products or their derivatives e.g. antibiotics including the *-lactam penicillins and cephalosporins and macrolides such as erthyromycin and clarithromycin. However, there is an urgent need for new leads to antibiotics to combat the issues of antibiotic resistance.

In collaboration with scientists in the School of Biochemistry Bristol, this project will focus on gaining a deeper understanding of the biosynthesis of polyketide derived natural products with antibiotic activities and developing clean and efficient methods for the preparation of analogues. This programme will include growing bacterial cultures, isolating and purifying the natural products (including minor products) by chromatography. The structures of novel compounds will be determined by modern spectroscopic methods (NMR and MS) and their biosynthetic pathways elucidated. New methods will be developed for the efficient synthesis of analogues of the natural products including biomimetic approaches.