Pharmacy Professor Lands Prestigious Grant to Advance Drug Discovery

The National Institutes of Health awarded its highly competitive Research Grant Project to Cole Stevens, an associate professor of pharmacognosy in the Department of BioMolecular Sciences. The four-year grant will allow his team to accelerate the study of myxobacteria, a type of bacteria that has potential in drug discovery.

"The short-term benefits of this work will be for the research community, with the long-term benefits being the development of new drugs," Stevens said.

The work could lead to innovations in an understudied field, said Donna Strum, dean of the School of Pharmacy.

"Dr. Stevens has been active in this field for more than 20 years," Strum said. "His work is not only important for our understanding of a little-known bacteria but will have an impact on the future of medicine and public health.

Myxobacteria live in soil and have led to the development of antibiotics, immune system regulators and cancer-fighting medications such as the chemotherapy drug Ixabepilone, which was developed from the natural compound epothilone.

"Bacteria are resources that contain potential medicines," Stevens said. "Most of your clinical antibiotics and antifungals come from bacteria. Most of the antibiotics we use came from one single group of bacteria called Streptomyces, and there are a lot of tools out there available to do molecule discovery for Streptomyces.

"We're developing those tools for myxos."

Limited training or guidance are available worldwide on the logistics of studying this phylum of bacteria.

"This funding enables my lab to develop tools that might lower barriers preventing other scientists from working with myxobacteria," Stevens said. "This is important because myxobacteria are a proven source of drugs."

Myxobacteria may hold countless untapped possibilities for scientific and medical advancements. By identifying these new species and giving researchers the tools to study them, Stevens' team can help open the door to possible new drug discovery, he said.

"My team discovers new species of myxobacteria – nine last year – and makes them publicly available," Stevens said. "By doing this, we generate genetic data and identify biological features that may help make new natural substances.

"This grant will help us improve this process and create useful scientific tools, thereby making this bacteria easier to study."

This material is based on work supported by the National Institutes of Health grant no. 1R01GM149795-01A1.

Top: Cole Stevens, an associate professor of pharmacognosy, examines a bacterial culture in his lab in the School of Pharmacy. Stevens has been awarded $1.1 million from the National Institutes of Health to further his study of myxobacteria, a type of bacteria that may potentially be a source of new medications. Photo by Cole McNamara/School of Pharmacy