Dr. Erin Marshall, a graduate student from the Loesgen Lab, successfully defended her dissertation on March 11th. As a natural product chemist, she focused on the discovery of medicinal natural products produced by microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi. These microorganisms are prolific producers of natural products as they are in constant flux due to their environment, producing compounds for purposes such as competition, sequestering nutrients from the environment, and communication. These compounds can be extracted and repurposed for use as human drug candidates such as antibiotics, chemotherapeutics, and pain-relieving medications.
During her time at Whitney, Dr. Marshall focused on the discovery of pain-relieving natural products from microorganisms. She was able to collaborate with the Strother Lab to validate a study to discover pain-relieving natural products via testing in zebrafish. This study can be used to directly assess pain-relieving ability of compounds as well as determining toxicity and detrimental side effects that are common causes of clinical trial failure. Compounds discovered with this collaboration have the potential to become real drug candidates, with the aim of removing the need for opioids by discovering an alternative with no addiction potential with the same level of pain relief. Using this testing process, she was able to identify several natural product compounds with pain-relieving activity from a plant-associated fungus and a marine bacterium isolated from the Arctic Ocean. She then explored this activity to discover how these compounds were able to decrease pain sensations and confirm activity using human receptors.