WEHI Special ACRF Chemical Biology Seminar hosted by Dr Duong Nhu

Dr Sacha Pidot, Bsc(Hons) PhD GradDipComRes FASM

Head – Antibiotic Discovery Laboratory, Department of Microbiology and Immunology ,The Doherty Institute

From Natural Products to Nanoknives

Davis Auditorium / Bundoora Large Boardroom 

Join via TEAMS

Including Q&A session

Dr Sacha Pidot is a molecular microbiologist and research-teaching academic with interests in identifying new antimicrobials, primarily from Actinomycete bacteria, and understanding their biosynthesis. Sacha completed his PhD at Monash University in 2011 working on Mycobacterium ulcerans, which causes debilitating skin infections. Following this he was an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral fellow in chemical biology at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology in Germany. During this time, he was part of a team that discovered clostrubin, a novel antibacterial molecule produced by anaerobic bacteria, for which he received the Medac Prize (2014 and 2015) and the Leibniz Foundation “Drug of the Year” award (2015). Since their establishment in 2019 at the Doherty Institute, Sacha’s group has continued to unearth new antimicrobials from a range of bacterial sources.

New antibiotics are urgently needed to combat the rising tide of antimicrobial resistant bacterial infections. While bacterial natural products have been the source of some of the most important antibiotics used in the clinic, extensive exploitation of this valuable resource has led to the rediscovery of many known compounds and decreasing discovery rate for new antibiotics. Here, I will describe our experiences in unearthing new antibiotic molecules from several groups of bacteria, including the narrow spectrum nargenicin-family of antibiotics, and the antifungal terpenomycin. I will describe our efforts to understand the biosynthesis of these antimicrobials and show how bacteria use antimicrobial natural products to protect their environmental niche. In addition, I will discuss our work on new nanotechnology solutions to the problem of antimicrobial resistance. The combination of molecular biology, genomics and chemical biology used in these studies provides new insights into both these bacteria and antibiotic biosynthesis, revealing their potential as an excellent source for the discovery of new antimicrobials.

All Welcome!