(623g) Investigating and Targeting the Tactics Bacteria Use Against Phagosomal Stressors to Discover New Antibiotics

Phagocytes are immune cells that engulf bacteria and kill them through a combination of antimicrobials and nutrient limitation. Pathogens protect themselves against phagosomal stresses to propagate infections, and those systems constitute therapeutic targets for anti-infectives that are projected to be less prone to resistance development than those corrupted by current antibiotics. In this talk, I will discuss our work to understand how those defenses operate and interact, and how that knowledge might lead to new treatments, as well as describe our initial attempts to identify small molecules that target those systems.