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. Keyser2,4, Mireille Kamariza1, Aidan Pezacki3,4, Carolyn R. Bertozzi4,5
[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]