A Salmonella one-two punch

The Coombes lab is excited to share our latest research, led by PhD student Caressa Tsai (left). In her paper, published this month in Cell Chemical Biology, Caressa and company screened about 50,000 small molecules and found one that inhibited virulence gene expression in Salmonella typhimurium. Since some of the inhibited genes control resistance to certain antibiotics, this molecule, called dephostatin, also sensitizes the pathogen to polymyxin antibiotics including the last-resort drug, colistin. This research also included (then) undergraduate student Jordyn Perry (right) (now grad student in the Coombes lab), and great collaborators in the labs of Eric Brown and Jakob Magolan at McMaster University.