Our lab is focused on general aspects of mycobacterial processes that have proven vulnerable to chemical inhibition: transcription, translation, variant central carbon metabolic pathways that are critical for bacterial survival in animal models, protein complexes necessary for cell wall synthesis, and prokaryote-specific essential enzymes that can be selectively inhibited.

With strong expertise in biochemistry and structural biology and long standing collaborations with leading groups in mycobacterial genetics we leverage structural insight and novel genetic and chemical-genetic tools to understand mycobacterial biology and specifically identify vulnerabilities of the pathogen that can be exploited for drug design. Whole genome sequencing of clinical isolates, resistant mutants, and transposon libraries provide clues on how cells adapt to the conditions they encounter during the course of infection and allow for the identification of intracellular drug targets and decipher the molecular mechanisms of drug resistance.

We use over 100,000 compounds library and numerous whole cell active compound sets from collaborators as part of the Gates Foundation TB Drug Accelerator program to screen for inhibitors of critical targets.