Conférence Dr. Arunava DASGUPTA

Dr Arunava DASGUPTA

CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute
Lucknow, India

Discovering new drugs to combat old bugs: a quest for new arsenal against mycobacteria

Antimicrobial resistance has been internationally recognized as a significant threat to healthcare systems worldwide. Due to multiple reasons including unfavorable economics, increasing emergence of drug-resistant bacteria and expensive and lengthy clinical trials, most of the big pharma has exited the discovery and development of new anti-infectives. In order to augment the non-existent to depleted drug-discovery pipeline targeting drug-resistant bacteria especially mycobacteria, our lab follows 2 complimentary approaches: conventional phenotypic whole cell screening of diverse chemical scaffold libraries and drug-repurposing of FDA approved drugs for new clinical uses. In my talk, I will discuss and highlight the challenges which we face along with some success stories which have come out of my lab. The talk will highlight the core issue: Drug discovery against drug-resistant mycobacteria is an extremely interdependent, interconnected battle involving multiple expertise’s against an ancient, very intelligent, ruthless and adaptable adversary.