Overview
Infectious diseases are a leading cause of productivity loss and are responsible
for roughly a third of annual deaths worldwide; sepsis and mortality caused
by infectious diseases are also on the rise in the U.S. Antimicrobial resistance
is increasing rapidly and newly emerging diseases are causing considerable
concern: a new global pandemic could have a significant economic impact.
With the advent of microbial whole-genome sequencing, there has been some
renewed optimism that genomic knowledge will speed the development of new antimicrobials,
vaccines and diagnostics. Some success stories have been reported to date,
however these have been extensive/costly endeavors involving significant laboratory
requirements. This is largely due to the fact that the existing computational
screens for identifying potential drug targets and vaccine components are not
accurate enough.
We propose that through an interdisciplinary, technology driven methodology,
the effectiveness of genomic approaches for anti-infective drug discovery
could be greatly enhanced. Thus, this BCID Project is focused on the development
of more accurate and faster bioinformatics algorithms and tools for identifying
anti-infective drug targets, candidate drugs and potential vaccines. Our
interdisciplinary team is capitalizing on Simon Fraser University�s unique
strengths in computational, physical, chemical and biological sciences
to discover potential new therapeutic targets and test them first in
silico and then in the laboratory. Our program provides an environment
for trainees from the basic and applied sciences to learn career skills
relevant to performing interdisciplinary, team-based, internationally
competitive research. With the ability to analyze many infectious disease-causing
microbes in parallel, the computational methods we will develop could
potentially have a wide impact on efforts to control multiple infectious
diseases.