Interview Spotlight: Novel Strategies in Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria HANNAH SILVERMAN Bachelor of Health Sciences (Honours) Class of 2023
Dr. Eric Brown is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University and a member of the M.G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research. A recipient of several awards in the field of molecular biology and biochemistry, Dr. Brown’s research is primarily focused on understanding the systems that drive drug resistance in superbugs. He currently serves as the Director of the Biomedical Discovery and Commercialization Program as well as the Canada Research Chair in Chemical Biology.
MEDUCOLLAB
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ISSUE 1
Can you tell us how you got started in the field of microbiology and infectious disease research?
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I was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School in Boston, and I was studying enzymes that are involved in synthesizing cell walls in bacteria. Quite honestly, I had no idea that [I] was doing something that might be useful —I was just really fascinated with how bacteria built their own cell walls. But that was a time in the early 90s where drug resistance was beginning to rear its head in the clinic, and I became aware then that the work I was doing may have some practical utility [by] way of discovering new antibiotics.
