Mehdi Numa

A calcineurin antifungal strategy with analogs of FK506

A novel antifungal strategy targeting the inhibition of calcineurin is described. To develop a calcineurin based inhibitor of pathogenic fungi, analogs of FK506 were synthesized that were able to permeate mammalian but not fungal cells. Antagonists in combination with FK506 were not immunosuppressive and retained antifungal activity in A. fumigatus. To reduce the dosage burden of the antagonist, murine oral PK was improved an order of magnitude relative to previous FK506 antagonists.

Discovery of novel oxazepine and diazepine carboxamides as two new classes of heat shock protein 90 inhibitors.

Two novel series of oxazepine and diazepine based HSP90 inhibitors are reported. This effort relied on structure based design and isothermal calorimetry to identify small drug like macrocycles. Computational modelling was used to build into a solvent exposed pocket near the opening of the ATP binding site, which led to potent inhibitors of HSP90 (25-30).