Kathie Seley-Radtke, PhD
Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Development of Broad-Spectrum Antiviral Inhibitors
Bio
Post-Doctoral Auburn University 1996; Ph.D. Auburn University 1996; B.A. University of South Florida 1992
Current Fields of Interest
Medicinal/Synthetic Bioorganic/Organic Chemistry and Drug Design: Discovery, design and synthesis of nucleoside/nucleotide and heterocyclic enzyme inhibitors with chemotherapeutic emphasis in the areas of antiviral, anticancer, antibiotic, and antiparasitic targets. Primary goals include development of potent inhibitors to shut down disease replication pathways through a combination of cross-disciplinary synthetic, biological screening, mechanistic, and structure-based drug design techniques.
The primary focus for the Seley-Radtke laboratories involves the design and synthesis of flexible nucleoside (“fleximers”) and nucleobases (“flex-bases) inhibitors as a powerful approach to overcome the development of resistance to currently used therapeutics. The fleximers are able retain full potency when faced with “escape mutations” in biologically critical enzymatic systems – the inherent flexibility of the inhibitors allows them to conformationally adjust to steric and electronic clashes encountered in the binding site, and to engage secondary amino acids not previously involved in the enzyme’s mechanism of action.