The National Science Centre has announced the fifth ranking list of projects eligible for funding under the Weave-UNISONO 2025 competition. We are proud to announce that among the winning projects is a grant for Krzysztof Fink, PhD, from the Laboratory of Biomedical Chemistry IIET PAS. The project entitled ‘Amphiphilic peptidomimetics containing metallocarboranes as a strategy for designing future antibiotics (ST5)’ will be carried out as part of international cooperation with the Czech Republic. The foreign project manager is Ing. Mariusz Uchman, PhD (Department of Physical and Macromolecular Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague).
The aim of the project is to develop a new class of antimicrobial compounds – amphiphilic peptidomimetics containing metallocarboranes – as potential antibiotics of the future. The research responds to one of the most serious contemporary challenges in medicine, namely the growing resistance of bacteria to antibiotics.
The project is based on a concept inspired by natural antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), which act by selectively interacting with bacterial membranes. Unlike classic antibiotics, this mechanism hinders the development of bacterial resistance and enables the fight against bacteria in biofilms. The use of peptidomimetics also allows overcoming the limitations of natural AMPs, such as low metabolic stability and unfavourable pharmacokinetic properties.
The project plans to conduct research on the synthesis, physicochemical properties and biological activity of new compounds, as well as to analyse the molecular basis of their selectivity and antibacterial efficacy.