Swarts Lab

Research & Facilities

Research description

Overview

Bacterial pathogens have cell envelopes rich in sugars and lipids that are essential for bacterial survival but absent from humans, making them attractive targets for diagnostic and therapeutic development. We focus on mycobacteria, which include the pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In an effort to develop new tools for basic and translational mycobacteria research, we mainly focus on the cell envelope's distinctive outer membrane (the mycomembrane), which has numerous sugar- and lipid-based targets. Targeting such molecules for biological inquiry and therapeutic intervention is challenging using traditional genetic techniques, but chemical approaches offer a powerful alternative.

Research projects

Our lab has several project areas that are being actively pursued:

- Chemical and chemoenzymatic synthesis of bacterial sugars, lipids, and their analogues
- Chemical probes for imaging and profiling cell envelope components in intact bacterial cells
- Use of chemical tools to study cell envelope proteins in mycobacteria
- Synthesis and characterization of inhibitors of cell envelope synthesis pathways in mycobacteria

Our long-term goal is to gain a better understanding of cell envelope composition, dynamics, and function, with a particular focus on the mycomembrane. In addition, it is our hope that some of the tools developed in our lab will have be valuable for tuberculosis drug and diagnostic development.

More information about tuberculosis

M. tuberculosis has been infecting and causing disease in humans for thousands of years, and it remains one of the world's deadliest infectious agents. M. tuberculosis causes approximately 1.5 million deaths per year, predominantly in developing parts of the world. In most cases, tuberculosis is curable with a standard multi-drug therapy that is given over the course of several months. However, this is a challenging drug regimen with side effects, and in recent decades drug-resistant strains of M. tuberculosis that are unresponsive to traditional treatments have emerged. This calls for efforts to develop new antibiotics, improved diagnostic tools, and alternative therapeutic strategies, as well as basic research that supports these activities.

Research video for Dreyfus Foundation

Laboratory & facilities

Our lab is located in CMU's Biosciences Building, which is a four-level, 169,000 square foot facility that was built in 2016 with a budget of $95 million. This interdepartmental building houses biochemistry faculty from CMU's Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, as well as faculty from the Department of Biology, the School of Engineering & Technology, and the College of Medicine. Consisting mainly of research laboratories, the Biosciences Building has open-concept labs with segregated student desks, support rooms for shared equipment, core facilities for confocal & electron microscopy and flow cytometry, and specialty labs for synthetic chemistry and work with radioisotopes and pathogenic organisms.

We also utilize the facilities in Dow Science Complex, which is a four-level, 60,000 square foot building that was constructed in 1991. In addition to standard and active learning classrooms and introductory and advanced-level teaching laboratories, the Dow Science Complex features 20 faculty research laboratories, each permitting undergraduate and graduate students to carry out faculty-mentored chemistry research. Support laboratories for research instrumentation and services are also located in Dow, including for NMR spectroscopy, mass spectrometry (GC-MS, MALDI-TOF-MS, MS/MS, and high-resolution ESI-MS), chromatography, and radioactive materials research.

Biosciences Building

Synthesis lab

Biocontainment lab

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