Antibiotic Drug Discovery

Steven M. Firestine is an Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at Wayne State University. He received a B.S. with honors in chemistry from the University of Michigan and a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from Purdue University. Dr. Firestine conducted postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Stephen J. Benkovic before joining the medicinal chemistry faculty at Duquesne University. In 2005 he moved to Wayne State University. Dr. Firestine maintains an active research program focused in the area of anti-infective drug design. To date, he has authored more than 40 articles in peer-reviewed research journals and presented more than 75 research abstracts and seminars. Dr. Firestine is an active reviewer for the NIH and the MRC.  He serves on the editorial board of ACS Combinatorial Sciences and is a reviewer for numerous scientific journals. Troy Lister, PhD, is Head of Chemistry at Spero Therapeutics in Cambridge, MA. Dr. Lister previously held roles as Team Leader of Infection Chemistry at AstraZeneca and Investigator III in Global Discovery Chemistry at the Novartis Institute for BioMedical Research. He has lead numerous discovery programs searching for novel agents targeting bacterial and viral pathogens including multidrug resistant Gram negative and Gram positive bacteria, hepatitis C virus, human rhinovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, ebola virus and human enterovirus. Dr. Lister has led programs from the earliest stages of target selection and high throughput screening, through lead identification and optimization, to candidate selection and IND enablement. He is an author of 15 peer review publications, has extensive experience in natural product chemistry and is a member of the American Chemical Society. Dr. Lister received his B.Tech, B.S. and PhD degrees from Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California with Professoer K.C. Nicolaou.

Treatment of Clostridium difficile Infections;

Targeting Purine Biosynthesis for Antibacterial Drug Design;

Inhibitors of Biofilm Production;

Narrow Spectrum Antibacterial Agents;

The LPS Transport Pathway: A New Target for the Development of Gram-Negative Antibiotics;

The Discovery of Teixobactin;

Emerging Targets in Anti-Tubercular Drug Design;

Antibacterial Leads Targeting Isoprenoid Biosynthesis