Western University of Health Sciences

College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific

COMP Seminar Series Presents

Recycling And Refurbishing Anti-Tubercular Drugs

Presented by

Dr. Hector Ricardo Morbidoni Head

Molecular Microbiology Lab School of Medical Sciences

Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina Dr. Morbidoni was invited by Dr. Beatrice Saviola

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

12:30pm-1:30pm Classroom A, HEC, Pomona

Simulcast to Eastmoreland, COMP NW

Lunch will be provided with RSVP to kking@westernu.edu (Pomona) Or mguerrero@westernu.edu (COMP-NW) by noon, Thursday, Oct. 23.

Recycling And Refurbishing Anti-Tubercular Drugs

One of the first approaches undertaken in the quest for anti-tubercular compounds was that of understanding the mechanism of action of old drugs and proposing chemical modifications or other strategies to improve their activity, generally lost to the mechanisms of resistance developed by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. A leading case was the work carried out on a set of compounds with proven activity on the pathway of the synthesis of mycolic acids, essential long-chain fatty acids component of the mycobacterial cell envelope. As a result, different alternatives were developed, improving the activity of those inhibitors or producing novel compounds acting on the same molecular target(s) but avoiding the most common resistance strategies developed by the tubercle bacilli. During those attempts, other possible targets were identified. This talk focuses on the activity of those compounds, born at the light of the studies on several of the classic anti-tubercular drugs. THE SPEAKER: Dr. Morbidoni received his M. Sc. degrees in Pharmacy, Biochemistry and Industrial Microbiology from Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Afterward, he obtained his PhD in Biological Sciences from Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina working in the field of bacterial fatty acid biosynthesis. Later on, he pursued postdoctoral studies in bacterial physiology at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (IL) and Einstein College of Medicine (NYC). He then joined the faculty at the School of Medical Sciences at Universidad Nacional de Rosario. Dr. Morbidoni was appointed Director of the recently created Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology at that institution. Dr. Morbidoni´s group focus on fatty acid metabolism in mycobacteria, specially as a source of targets for drug development; among other interests he is studying biotechnological uses of bacteriophages as an alternative to antibiotics.