Preludium (2024-2026)

Conjugates of peptide nucleic acids with aminoglycosides and fluoroquinolones as a novel strategy to target multi-drug resistant bacteria

Antibiotic resistance is rising to a dangerously high level, which makes it one of the major threats to global health nowadays, as the newest WHO report states. As antibiotics lose their effectiveness, an increasing number of infections become difficult to cure or even incurable. Therefore, antimicrobial resistance can jeopardize progress in modern medicine – without efficient antibiotics for preventing and treating infections, surgeries or organ transplantations develop into serious danger. Consequently, research on new antibiotics with novel targets and/or different modes of action, especially targeting multi-drug resistant (MDR) bacteria is crucial.

The main goal of this project is the synthesis and biological evaluation of novel antibacterial conjugates as effective agents for drug-resistant pathogens. The proposed strategy combines an antisense approach based on synthetic peptide nucleic acid (PNA) oligomers with known antibiotics representing the classes of aminoglycosides and fluoroquinolones.
The principal hypothesis of this project is that the conjugation of peptide nucleic acids targeting essential bacterial genes with aminoglycosides and fluoroquinolones might lead to new effective antibiotics based on synergistic effects.

Further details can be found HERE

Principal Investigator: mgr Izabela Siekierska, CeNT UW

Project period: 2024 – 2026

Funding: Preludium 22, National Science Centre