Harvard University chemist Daniel Kahne has spent much of his career studying the fundamentals of how bacteria thrive and evade attack.
His lab has a special interest in gram-negative bacteria, which have an outer membrane that many antibiotics cannot cross.
Among these bacteria is carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, or CRAB. Designated by the World Health Organization as a “critical priority” for antibiotic development, CRAB kills hundreds of critically ill patients in the U.S. each year, usually in hospital settings, by causing untreatable blood, lung, or urinary tract infections.
Strengthened by partnerships with basic research labs and the pharmaceutical industry, Kahne and colleagues are working to usher in a new class of antibiotics to combat the A. baumannii superbug — and perhaps others.
Such an achievement would have significant benefit for human health. No new antibiotics have been introduced for gram-negative bacteria in more than 50 years, and the WHO has declared that development of new antibiotics remains “inadequate” to address the global threat of antibiotic resistance.
