NHMRC Grants.

NHMRC grant success to Victorian College of Pharmacy researchers for Drug Design project.

A grant totalling $543,000 via the NHMRC Projects scheme (over three years) has been awarded to a research team including Dr Martin Scanlon and Prof Bill Charman from the Victorian College of Pharmacy, A/Prof Jenny Martin, Drs Begona Heras and Bob Reid from the Institute for Molecular Biosciences at University of Queensland. This collaborative research project will utilise structure-based drug-design methods including NMR-based fragment screening and X-ray crystallography to identify lead compounds as potential inhibitors of the bacterial oxidoreductase enzyme DsbA.

DsbA is a bacterial enzyme that is essential for the pathogenicity of many bacterial organisms because it is required for the correct folding of toxins and virulence factors. Mutation in dsbA has the same phenotypic effect as a mutation in the gene encoding the virulence determinant, and DsbA has therefore been identified as an attractive and novel target for the development of small molecules with potential broad-spectrum anti-virulence activity.