Dr Natalie Tatum wins inaugural CoSeC Impact Award, 2020

The inaugural CoSeC Impact Award is presented to an early career researcher (Masters or PhD student, or post-doctoral researcher with up to five years’ experience) who has benefited from CoSeC support in their work. The winner has the opportunity to work 1-to-1 to translate their case into a REF-style study, spend time training and presenting at STFC facilities, and receives an engraved award to keep.  

Natalie’s work began during her undergraduate degree in working to circumvent antimicrobial resistance of tuberculosis (TB), caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. TB is considered to be a global health emergency and is the leading cause of death by a single agent (more so than, for example, HIV). Treatment for TB currently requires a six-month regimen of ‘first-line’ antibiotics, but multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) and extensively drug resistant TB (XDR-TB) are not cured by the standard treatment and second-line drugs are required which are tougher on the patient and require nine to twenty months’ compliance. 

Through CoSeC support – crystallographic training and tools through CCP4, and computational training through CCP5 – Natalie has collaborated with the Institut Pasteur de Lille to identify novel inhibitors for the TB protein EthR, which inhibits the activation of the second-line pro-drug antibiotic ethionamide. Though a virtual screening program designed and carried out during her PhD, Natalie identified and confirmed by crystallography new EthR inhibitors which were able to boost the efficiency of ethionamide. Computational studies were used to explore the ways in which EthR interacts with these inhibitors, furthering our understanding to develop more potent, active inhibitors in on-going collaboration with her former PhD supervisor at Durham University, Ehmke Pohl, and the group at the Insitut Pasteur de Lille.

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Last modified: Tue, 19 May 2020 20:54:19 BST