November (Zoom) 11/09/2022

Paradigm-Changing Antibiotics to Combat the Antimicrobial Resistance Crisis

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has been described as a slow-moving tsunami that threatens to undermine modern medicine and is directly responsible for 1.27 million annual deaths. This talk will provide background on the AMR crisis, explain technical hurdles and commercial barriers that have stifled innovation, and describe a serendipitous discovery at UCSB that could yield the first novel class of broad-spectrum antibiotics in decades.

Dr. Alex Moreland, Postdoctoral Researcher, UCSB Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Dr. Moreland is a postdoctoral scholar at UCSB in the Bazan Research Group, Center for Polymers & Organic Solids. He is also a co-founder and CSO of Xiretsa, a local startup company. For the last four years, his research has centered on developing a novel class of antibiotics to combat the antimicrobial resistance crisis. Dr. Moreland moved from his hometown of Morro Bay to Santa Barbara in 2008, completed his B.S. at UCSB with majors in biology and chemistry in 2012, moved "across the street" to work at Raytheon Vision Systems in Goleta, and then returned to UCSB in 2014 to pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry.