Tim Clausen, Senior Group Leader am IMP - Research Institute of Molecular Pathology hält eine Flagship Lecture zum Thema "BacPROTACs - antibiotics of the future?":
Hijacking the protein degradation system offers unique opportunities for drug discovery, as seen for PROTACs and further degrader technologies. Despite the great promise for medical chemistry, however, it has so far not been possible to reprogram the bacterial degradation machinery to interfere with microbial infections. In recent years, our group developed such an approach, engineering small-molecule degraders, so-called BacPROTACs, to redirect the bacterial proteasome, ClpC:ClpP, towards neo-substrates. Drug susceptibility and proteomics assays performed in mycobacteria demonstrate in vivo activity of BacPROTACs, highlighting their potential as future antibiotics.
