Award
NIH Reporter #5R21AI178088-02
Computational de novo design of macrocyclic type I Signal Peptidase inhibitors
Recipient
University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States
Award Amount
$188,344.00
Ceiling
$188,344.00
Awarded
June 20, 2025
Identifier
5R21AI178088-02
This award funds a project to develop new antibiotics by designing inhibitors targeting bacterial type I signal peptidase using computational peptide design and high-throughput chemical synthesis. The project aims to create broad-spectrum inhibitors to combat antibiotic resistance.
Description
Methods for developing new antibiotics are urgently required to address the growing rise of antibiotic resistance mechanisms. We propose to leverage our recent advances in computational peptide design and integrate them with high-throughput chemical synthesis to develop inhibitors of a validated antimicrobial target – the type 1 bacterial signal peptidase. The computational and experimental methods developed in this project will be broadly applicable to developing superior analogs of naturally-occurring antibiotics and rationally designing new classes of antibiotics.