Kayla Landers

Antibiotic resistance is a pressing global health crisis which threatens the entrance into a post-antibiotic era in which once effectively treated bacterial pathogens will return to posing a lethal threat. Among the most concerning of these pathogens are gram-negative bacteria due to the presence of an outer membrane that is widely impenetrable to current antibiotic therapeutic regimens, allowing them to elude death. The Hergenrother lab has pioneered an ingenuitive set of guidelines, capable of predicting the ability of small-molecules to penetrate the outer membrane barrier and enter gram-negative bacteria, termed eNTRy Rules. Leveraging this identified criteria, my project focuses on the conversion of a promising natural product into a potent and broad-spectrum antibiotic possessing activity against gram-negative bacteria utilizing a prodrug approach.