Natural products and their derivatives are found in a vast number of life-saving medicines, serving such roles as antibiotics, immunosuppressives, and anticancer agents. In order to compete with climbing rates of drug resistance or to dampen toxic side effects of drugs, new natural products must be identified or derivatives thereof synthesized.

As an AMR Fellow in the group of Greg Challis, Chris is using X-ray crystallography and carbene footprinting (a structural mass spectrometry method) to examine protein-protein interfaces in large enzymatic assembly lines, such as nonribosomal peptide synthetases and polyketide synthases. He plans to exploit his findings to engineer chimeric assembly lines capable of generating novel drug-like molecules.

Dr. Christopher D. Fage
Department of Chemistry
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
United Kingdom

Email: C.Fage@warwick.ac.uk