Chemistry Professor devises supercomputer to simulate reactions

New antibiotics are badly needed as bacteria become resistant to existing drugs. In 2000 University of Pennsylvania chemist William DeGrado showed one of his ideas for a new antibiotic to molecular modeling expert Michael Klein, now a professor of chemistry at Temple. Klein devised a supercomputer simulation to predict what would happen when DeGrado's molecule collided with a bacterium's membrane. "What we discovered with the simulation is that these things dive into the membrane and swim around underneath," says Klein. "When there is enough of them they make their way to the other side of the membrane and make a pore." No resistance to the drug has emerged in standard lab tests.
Feb 14, 2011 | Forbes Magazine