Events

Event Description

Please join the Chemistry Department for a talk by Professor Michaelle Chojnacki, Principal Investigator at the Trudeau Institute.

Expanding the Druggable Space in Mycobacterium tuberculosis: From Chemical Discovery to New Biological Vulnerabilities

Tuberculosis remains a leading cause of death from infectious disease worldwide, underscoring the need for new antibiotics with novel chemical structures and mechanisms of action. However, antibacterial drug discovery has historically focused on a relatively limited set of well-established cellular targets and pathways. The work uses complementary chemical and biological approaches to expand the druggable space in Mycobacterium tuberculosis and identify new starting points for therapeutic development. In this seminar, She will discuss strategies that integrate phenotypic screening, bacterial genetics, chemogenomics, and medicinal chemistry to discover novel antibacterial chemical matter and uncover previously unrecognized vulnerabilities in M. tuberculosis. These studies demonstrate how interrogating the relationship between chemical structure, antibacterial activity, and bacterial physiology can reveal new opportunities for antibiotic discovery and development.

Dr. Michaelle Chojnacki is a Principal Investigator at the Trudeau Institute. She earned her PhD in Microbiology from the University at Buffalo, where she studied mechanisms of DNA replication in papillomaviruses. She subsequently completed postdoctoral training at the University of Rochester with Dr. Paul Dunman, investigating antibacterial drug discovery and bacterial stress-response mechanisms in ESKAPE pathogens. In 2021, Dr. Chojnacki joined the Trudeau Institute to establish an antibacterial drug discovery program focused on tuberculosis. Her laboratory integrates bacterial genetics, chemogenomics, chemical biology, and drug discovery approaches to uncover novel bacterial vulnerabilities and advance chemically distinct antibacterial compounds with new mechanisms of action.