معرفی
Aurijit Sarkar, PhD, serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacy Sciences at Creighton University's School of Pharmacy and Health Professions. His research focuses on combating antimicrobial resistance through innovative drug discovery approaches, particularly targeting methicillin-resistant and vancomycin-intermediate Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA and VISA). The Sarkar Lab integrates computational drug design with experimental validation to develop antimicrobial enhancers that revitalize existing antibiotics.
Research interests center on overcoming the antimicrobial resistance crisis by designing transformational enhancer molecules. Unlike conventional combination therapies like Augmentin, Sarkar's work explores novel mechanisms to enhance antibiotic efficacy against resistant pathogens. Key questions driving the lab include target identification for antimicrobial enhancement, computational design tools for enhancers, and clinical translation pathways. This work bridges computational structural biology, data analysis, and bacterial pathogenesis to address urgent public health threats.
Recent publications reveal a strong trend toward computational-experimental hybrid approaches in antibiotic discovery. The lab consistently targets S. aureus resistance mechanisms while developing broader methodologies for screening library design and glycosaminoglycan-protein interaction analysis. Research spans from fundamental biophysical studies of water-mediated binding to applied drug development against priority pathogens.
Sarkar's research has secured funding from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, North Carolina Biotechnology Center, and American Heart Association. His lab actively recruits students for projects combining computational modeling with wet-lab validation in antibiotic discovery. Current work emphasizes expanding antimicrobial enhancement strategies beyond existing clinical paradigms to address the widening resistance gap.
The Sarkar Lab maintains experimental capabilities to test computationally generated hypotheses, focusing on bacterial membrane permeability, efflux systems, and virulence modulation. Future directions include clinical translation of enhancer compounds and development of next-generation screening platforms for antibiotic discovery.
