Nanocrystal Therapeutics for the Treatment of Multi-Drug Resistant Pathogens

Dan Feldheim of the University of Colorado in the U.S. will test his hypothesis that gold nanocrystals coated with drug compounds can effectively inhibit protein- protein interactions that often drive disease pathogenesis, will be less susceptible to evolutionary mechanisms that lead to drug resistance, and offer enhanced drug delivery characteristics. This project's Phase I research demonstrated that gold nanocrystals can be tailored to circumvent many viral and bacterial evolutionary drug resistance mechanisms. In Phase II, he is now studying the ability of small molecule-coated nanoparticles to withstand resistance mechanisms of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB).