Sieber Lab

Multiresistant bacteria pose a major threat to human health. With numerous potent drugs discovered in the “golden age” of antibiotics in the mid of the 20th century, new developments have dramatically declined while strains resistant to common antibiotics are on the rise. Since many of the antibiotics currently in use focus on a rather narrow scope of cellular targets, multiple resistance strategies have already evolved. Given the vast number of essential proteins in bacteria there is a huge potential to decipher unprecedented antibiotic targets yet lacking resistance strategies. Our goal is to identify unprecedented antibacterial targets beyond the scope of current antibiotics and to exploit these for chemical manipulation. For this we apply a multi-disciplinary strategy comprising synthetic chemistry, functional proteomics, microbiology, protein biochemistry techniques as well as machine learning tools.