Research Focus

The most common prescribed antibiotics are β-lactam compounds such as penicillins, cephalosporins and carbapenems. The overuse of antibiotics in the clinical setting has resulted in a large number of bacteria which are resistant to almost all antibiotics. The most common way for bacteria to become resistant to β-lactam antibiotics is to produce the metallo-β-lactamases (MβLs), which hydrolyze almost all β-lactam antibiotics. We are currently conducting inhibitor synthesis, spectroscopic and mechanistic characterization of interaction between inhibitors and MβLs by NMR, EPR, EXAFS and RFQ in an attempt to develop broad-spectrum inhibitors of the MβLs for combating antibiotic resistance.