Software That is Helping Researchers Fight Deadly Bacteria to Be Lecture Topic

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A new software package developed by Western New York researchers that is allowing pharmacologists to begin to design new drugs to fight a deadly bacteria will be the topic of a lecture to be held at 7 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 22, in Room 201 of the Natural Sciences Complex on the University at Buffalo North (Amherst) Campus.

Free and open to the public, the talk is sponsored by the UB Sciences Alumni Association of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

Russ Miller, Ph.D., professor of computer science at UB and a member of the research team at UB and the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute that developed the new software, called SnB, will speak about “Drug Design by Shaking and Baking Atoms.”

In his talk, he will discuss how, with virtually no intervention by the user, SnB is able to solve molecular structures that no other methods have solved.

Rational drug design, which is expected to speed development of targeted treatments and cures, requires detailed knowledge of the three-dimensional shapes of crystals of potential drugs and other molecules involved in the disease process. However, traditional methods often are unable to solve certain large, complex structures, such as vancomycin, considered the “antibiotic of last resort” against life-threatening bacterial infections. Now that a new bacterial strain that is resistant to vancomycin has been identified, information about its structure is more critical.

With SnB, a University at Pennsylvania team was able to solve the structure, providing the scientists with information they will need to design a modified version of the drug that can circumvent the resistance problem.

Miller also will discuss the importance of SnB for solving other important structures.

The SnB team is headed by Miller; Charles M. Weeks, Ph.D., senior research scientist at Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute, and Herbert A. Hauptman, Ph.D., president of the institute and UB research professor of computer science.

For more information, about the lecture, contact Cindy Nydahl at 645-2531.