Dr. Alita Miller
Head of Biology
Entasis Therapeutics
Pathogen-Directed Strategies at Entasis Therapeutics
Antibiotic resistance is a serious public health crisis. Antibacterial regulatory guidelines have been recently updated to allow for more streamlined development of narrow-spectrum, precision therapies to treat highly problematic, multidrug-resistant bacterial infections. Accordingly, various strategies are being pursued to develop candidate agents for narrower-than-usual or specific pathogen-directed indications. Entasis Therapeutics has embraced this new paradigm as exemplified by two of its current clinical programs: (1) zoliflodacin, a novel oral antibiotic for the treatment of uncomplicated gonorrhea and (2) sulbactam-ETX2514, a novel combination agent targeting carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii. Details around the discovery and development of each of these candidates will be presented.
Seminar at 3:30 pm in 2006 Rennebohm Hall
Reception to follow in Rennebohm Hall Atrium
Alita Miller is the Head of Bioscience at EntasisTherapeutics, a small biotech focused on the discovery and and development of novel antibiotics to treat serious Gram-negative infections. Alita holds a BA in Chemistry from Kalamazoo College and a PhD in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology from the University of Chicago. Her postdoctoral work was on bacterial pathogenesis at the University of Michigan with Vic DiRita. Alita spent over a decade in the Pfizer Antibacterials Unit where she worked on both large and small molecule anti-infective projects. Alita joined AstraZeneca in 2013 as an Associate Director of Infection and was a founding member of Entasis when it was spun out of AstraZeneca Infection in May of 2015. Alita serves on several scientific advisory and editorial boards and is a permanent member of the NIH grant review panel for Drug Discovery and Resistance. Her current research interests include understanding the molecular drivers of bacterial antibiotic uptake.
Host: AAPS UW-Madison Student Chapter