07/20/2021
By Matthew Gage
The Kennedy College of Science, Department of Chemistry, invites you to attend a doctoral dissertation defense by William Ndugire entitled “Synthesis and antimicrobial applications of gold nanoclusters.”
The defense will be held on Aug. 2 at 1 p.m. by Zoom. Please contact Matthew Gage for meeting information if you are interested in attending. The committee will be composed of Mingdi Yan (chair), Matthew Gage, Marina Ruths and Yuyu Sun. A brief abstract is provided below.
Abstract: Antimicrobial resistance is a grave crisis facing public health. While the rate of resistance to traditional antibiotics has been rapidly increasing, the supply of new antibacterial drugs is painstakingly slow. In this dissertation, we present work on the synthesis and applications of glycosylated gold nanoclusters as antibacterial agents. First, we demonstrated that gold nanoclusters, formulated based on the structural motif of an FDA-approved small molecule drug, displayed enhanced antibacterial activity and reduced cytotoxicity. Second, we discovered a new strategy to deliver potent antimicrobial agents from non-toxic gold nanoclusters to multidrug resistant Gram-negative bacteria. In both cases, the nano-formulation revealed unique mechanisms of action different from that of the small molecule counterparts. Finally, we discovered a new method for the synthesis of water-soluble Au(9) clusters, as well as a previous unreported solution isomerization of the Au(9) clusters.
All interested students and faculty members are invited to attend.