Vincent Rotello and Team Win $505K NIH Grant to Combat Infectious Disease
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Vincent Rotello, the Charles A. Goessmann Professor of Chemistry and a Distinguished Professor at UMass Amherst, is part of a research team—alongside the University of North Carolina Asheville’s Amanda Wolfe and Ryan Steed—that will receive a $505,000 National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to advance new approaches for understanding and combating infectious disease.
As published in a press release carried in Asheville, NC's Mountain Xpress, this grant will support urgently needed antibiotic research focused on "targeted development and selective delivery of small molecule antibiotics for the treatment of multidrug resistant infections caused by gram-negative pathogens."
Through the Rotello Research Group, Rotello's work focuses on supramolecular chemistry: the study and application of non-covalent interactions. These interactions include hydrogen bonding, aromatic stacking, and other electrostatic attractions and repulsions. The Rotello Research Group employs these concepts of molecular recognition to “explore a wide range of essential questions in the areas of biology, biomedicine, and material chemistry.”
This new NIH-supported effort complements Rotello's interdisciplinary approach, connecting fundamental chemical principles with technologies that could ultimately improve the diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases. Furthermore, this grant offers opportunities for exchange between UNC Asheville and UMass:
"Beginning in the second year of the grant, UNC Asheville students will...gain direct experience with in vivo wound infection models through collaborative work in Dr. Rotello’s laboratory at UMass Amherst."
— Mountain Xpress
Learn more at Mountain Xpress.