Home Department: Biology
Supported by: Bio-X
Mentor: Carolyn Bertozzi, Chemistry

There is a critical need for point-of-care diagnostic tools that rapidly and selectively label Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis. Ashley will be developing new environment-sensitive small molecule tools that can only be metabolized by M. tuberculosis, allowing detection of this specific bacterium in biological samples. She will be optimizing the tools’ biophysical properties and pharmacokinetics to not only diagnose but also study infection in humans and live model organisms.

Poster presented at the Stanford Bio-X Interdisciplinary Initiatives Symposium on August 24, 2017:

Synthesis of Solvatochromic Probes to Label the Mycobacterial Cell Wall

Ashley Utz¹, Samantha G. L. Keyser^2,4, Mireille Kamariza¹, Aidan Pezacki^3,4, Carolyn R. Bertozzi^4,5
[Departments of Biology¹ and Chemistry⁴ and Howard Hughes Medical Institute⁵, Stanford University; Department of Chemistry², University of California, Berkeley; Department of Chemistry & Biomolecular Sciences³, University of Ottawa, Canada]